The Ghosts That Haunt Me
by LadyEmmy
Summary: Continuing on from Carry On My Wayward Son, the beginning of an AU Season 2 for The Winchester Brothers and the Callum Sisters


_**The Ghosts That Haunt Me**_

**Prologue**

**Sacramento California**

The sun sank below the horizon, replacing the summer day's vivid blue with shades more appropriate to a horror film – blood red, murky orange-gold, sickly green and a purple reminiscent of bruises.

Evelyn Talbert rinsed the juice glass in her hand, a faint smile crossing her lips as she watched her children play through the kitchen window. As the evening approached, they'd begged to chase fireflies in the backyard. Their peals of laughter as they alternately chased each other and the luminescent insects carried through the window.

"What are the kids up to?" Jeffrey asked as he brought the last of the dinner dishes in from the table. He set them on the counter by her side and wrapped his arms around her waist, resting his chin on her shoulder. He breathed in with a smile, appreciating the scent of his wife's strawberry blond hair.

"The fireflies are out," she told him, shivering as his lips pressed to her neck.

He made a soft purring noise against her neck, smiling when he felt her shiver. "I wonder if it's too dark to try and put the tent up in the back yard," he murmured, his arms tightening around her waist. "Supposed to be clear tonight. And Izzy's going to be at Samantha's," he hinted.

"Do you even know where it is?" she asked him, with a laugh. They'd moved into the house a month ago, and still there were boxes to be unpacked.

"I think it's in the basement," he told her and then straightened. "I'll go check."

"Are you kidding me? You'll never find it in the dark."

"What do you mean? I just changed the light bulb down there the other day," Jeffrey said, frowning.

"I know. But when I was in here earlier this afternoon the light came on and not a minute later, it popped."

"Are you sure one of the kids didn't just turn it on and forget to turn it off again?" he asked her, rummaging in a drawer for a flashlight.

"Jeff, I was standing right here. The kids were in the living room watching TV and it just came on."

"Lights don't just come on, Ev," he argued, then walked over to the doorway at the side of the kitchen and opened the door leading to the basement.

"I know that, but I know what I saw," she said, irritation dampening the ardor she'd felt only a few moments before.

"I bet there's a short somewhere. This house is old, we should expect things like this." i '_This is why we should have bought a new house,' _ /i he thought to himself as he directed the flashlight over the steps in front of him. The basement door slammed shut against his back, causing him to jump and grasp the handrail to avoid pitching down the stairs. He turned and tried the door handle, but the door wouldn't budge. "Evelyn! What the hell is wrong with you?" He yelled, banging on the door.

"Jeff!" Evelyn yelled and ran for the door, twisting the knob in each direction though it refused to budge. She braced one foot on the doorjamb and pulled hard.

"Evelyn, quit playing around and open the damn door!" he shouted through the wood.

"I'm trying!" she yelled back, struggling with the door handle.

Jeff banged on the door and tried jiggling the handle again, but to no avail. "Wonderful," he growled. As he stood there, the flashlight started to flicker and then went out. "What the hell?" he started to mutter and shook the flashlight. It came on for a moment, burned brightly and then started to flicker again.

"Jeff?" What's going on?"

"The damn flashlight keeps going out," he told her.

"I can't get the door to open," she told him through the wood.

"I told you the lock was busted on the door, why did you shut it?" he demanded.

"I didn't! It just closed," she snapped back.

"It closed, all by itself, I suppose," he snarled.

Evelyn bit her tongue on the remark that sprang to life and kept on pulling at the handle.

Upstairs in the bathroom, Izzy shook her head as she heard the noise from down below. Her parents were at it again. The whole point of buying the house and moving away from Los Angeles, away from her school, her friends, the only home she'd known was so that their parents could "work through things and they could become a family again". Things weren't working out that way. At fifteen, Izzy half-wished her parents would just get it over with and get a divorce like all her friends' parents had. At least then they could have still lived in the same city.

Turning up her MP3 player, she adjusted the earbuds and settled back in the warm bubble bath, shutting out the rest of the house for a while. Distracted by the music, she didn't notice the shadow spreading across the bathroom floor. It crept up the leg of the claw-footed tub and over the edge. It flowed into the water, an inky-black blossom. The water thickened, coagulating over her legs, the tendrils of thick, black fluid coating and staining her skin as it sank in. Unconsciously, she shifted and viscous, oily-black liquid rose up in front of her, taking on a vaguely humanoid shape inches from her face.

Izzy's legs tingled and burned, prompting her to open her eyes. Coming face to face with the black liquid form that continued to materialize up from her bath water, her breath caught in her throat, heart hammering in her chest.

A face formed in the darkness, a gaping toothless mouth screeching at her, "Get out!"

Screaming, Izzy pulled herself out of the tub, sliding over the edge and landing on the cold tile floor, water splashing all around her. She scrabbled madly for the door, her eyes never leaving the shape that flowed over the side of the tub and oozed across the floor toward her.

"Mom!" she screamed, banging at the door, her fear-numbed fingers refusing to close around the knob. "Dad!"

Her daughter's scream from upstairs drew Evelyn away from the basement door. As she pushed through the swinging door, something stopped her. A cold chill spread over the fingers of her hand as she felt them involuntarily pried backward.

Stepping backwards, Evelyn looked at her hands in confusion. It was like nothing she'd ever felt before. She saw something move in her peripheral vision, and peered around nervously, seeing nothing out of the ordinary. She let out a soft, nervous whimper, paling as her breath condensed before her eyes. She swept a disbelieving hand through the vapor, making it swirl around her. Her next breath also condensed immediately, although it seems to coalesce into a face. Frightened, she waved her fingers through the face in front of her. Instead of breaking apart, it reformed, jerking her toward the face as it snarled, "Get out!"

Jeff jumped at his wife's terrified scream and began to beat on the door that separated then, calling her name. The flashlight that he had stuck in his pocket flickered before finally dying. He cursed, taking out the flashlight and beating it against his palm, clicking the on/off button in frustration. Behind him, he heard something scratching. He spun to look into the dark basement, squinting to see in the last vestiges of sunlight that filtered through the dusty, high-set basement windows.

"Is someone there?" he demanded, taking a step down the stairs. The flashlight blazed to life in his hand and he screamed at the figure in front of him. Her face was twisted into a mask of rage, violet eyes glowing madly as her short red hair blew back from her face in a non-existent wind. It was then he realized he could see i through /i her into the room beyond. "What the hell?"

"Get out of my house!" she screamed at him, charging.

The door at the top of the stairs blew open with a bang that shook the walls and he scrambled up them into the kitchen. He skidded to a stop - Evelyn was standing in the middle of the room staring at a cloud of vapors that vaguely resembled the woman he had just encountered.

"Evelyn! Get the kids, we're out of here!" he snarled, snapping her out of her shock. She ran through the kitchen to the stairs where she found Izzy, dripping and shaking on the hallway floor.

"Honey!" She cried as she ran into the bathroom and grabbed a towel to cover her daughter.

"What's happening, Mom?" Izzy whimpered.

"I don't know, honey," Evelyn said, holding her shaking daughter tightly. Maybe Father Timothy would know what to do.

** i Chapter One /i **

The sun streamed in through the large windows of the courtroom, making the crowded room uncomfortably warm. Voices buzzed and murmured in the room as the bailiff called the next case. The judge, silently wishing to himself that he could get out of the long black robe, shifted uncomfortably on the leather chair. He could feel the sweat dripping down the back of his neck and it made him irritable.

"Next case," the bailiff intoned dully."The state of California versus John Doe. Charges are impersonation, identity theft, possession of forged identification, driving without a valid license and failure to stop at a stop sign." The bailiff read the charges off of the file and then handed it to the judge who scanned it wearily.

"How do you plead?" he asked, idly.

Dean Winchester opened his mouth to reply when the tall man beside him cut in. "Let me do the talking." He turned to the judge. "Not guilty, your honor."

"Thank you Mr. Caravetti, but I want to hear it from the defendant," the judge said gruffly and then looked at the young man beside him. He frowned when he took in the battered leather jacket, jeans, flannel shirt and stubbled cheeks.

Dean Winchester looked at the man beside him, and then up at the judge sitting on the bench, "Not guilty."

"And what about the matter of bail?"

The woman standing at the other table, the assistant District Attorney, Dean had been told, pulled out a file and flipped it open. "Your honor, identity theft is a serious crime. The defendant is a flight risk. We are requesting that he be remanded without bail."

"Your honor," Peter Caravetti said smoothly. "My client has been more than co-operative with the police, despite being held without cause. He i is /i Dean Winchester. This is simply a case of mistaken identity."

"Dean Winchester was killed in St. Louis, Missouri while a suspect in an active murder investigation!" Cynthia Hammersma cried. "How could it be a case of mistaken identity?"

"It is our contention that the person in St. Louis stole _my_ client's identity. To be quite honest, i if /i my client were even remotely capable of using a stolen identity, why would he use the identity of a man who was a suspect in another crime? That would be asking to be arrested. I would request that the case in St. Louis be reopened and until that time, that my client be released on his own recognizance."

"He has no ties to the community," Hammersma cut in. "Nothing to keep him here. He hasn't had, as far as we can tell, a permanent address in the past twenty years!"

"Your honor," Peter Caravetti replied, "the defendant's family lives here."

"Your honor, his brother goes to school here. That is it," she said.

"That's not true!" Evan cried from the gallery behind the defendant's table.

"Sis, sit down!" Kit grasped the edge of her shirt and tugged her back.

"Evan!" Sam hissed at her, also reaching for her.

"Order in my courtroom!" The judge bellowed, banging his gavel on the desk. He pinned her with a baleful stare and Evan felt a tremor of nervousness run down her spine. "And just who are you?"

"Your honor," she began, "Sir. My name is Evan Callum. I'm Dean's fiancee. We have a son together. For the past year and a half, Dean and his brother, Sam, have been living with my family. Sam is married to my sister, Kit. They have a son, James, who is my nephew, as well as Dean's. His father also lives here with us. Her's i very /i tied to this community."

"Your honor, they are not married," the ADA began.

"Great, another one who focuses on that little detail," Evan muttered.

"It would be easy for the defendant to take off. Again, I contend that he is a flight risk and should be denied bail."

"Miss, sit down," he ordered Evan. "I am not here to argue the case. Defendant to be held without bail and I am going to send this case to trial. They can figure out who's who," he said and banged his gavel.

"Dean!" Evan leaned over the railing as the court officers came to get Dean. She cupped his face and gave him a quick kiss as the guards put the cuffs on him and began to pull him away. "We're going to get you out," she told him with a confidence she didn't feel.

"What are you going to do?" he asked her.

"We're working on it," she told him.

"Tell JD I'll be home soon," he whispered to her.

"I will," she assured him.

Once he was ushered out of the courtroom, Evan turned to the others who were standing beside Dean's lawyer. "We have to get him out of here," she growled before walking up the aisle and pushing the door open.

While the others stayed behind to discuss the situation with Dean's lawyer, Evan walked out into the sunshine and stopped. She had hoped to be able to bring Dean home with them. Now though, it looked like they were going to have to tell JD that his daddy wasn't coming home for a little while longer.

"Are you okay, Sis?" Kit asked her softly.

Evan sighed and sat down on the front steps of the courthouse. "I want him home. Kit."

"We're doing what we can," Kit reminded her, sitting down beside her.

"I know," Evan replied. "It's just that I feel so helpless. I can't do anything to help. And I don't think I did much good in there," she grumbled ruefully.

"We're getting a trial date, that's one step closer. Between now and then, we can call Becky and work out some kind of believable story. We're going to have to get creative," Kit warned her. "We're just going to have to keep the creative part from Caravetti. He's kind of a straight arrow and took this case as a favor to Sam. He might not take too kind a view on what we may have to do."

Evan sighed. Sam had gone to his professor for some advice on what to do about Dean's case and the man had taken it on pro-bono. She didn't want to jeopardize Sam's schooling, or future law career, in any way, but she also wanted Dean home.

Evan looked out over the manicured lawns and saw the court employees taking their lunches, lawyers conversing with their clients. She had almost been part of this life. If she'd continued to intern at the law firm in Los Angeles, she would have. But she couldn't stay there. Not after some of the things she'd seen there.

"Maybe that's the problem," Evan said aloud and dug in her purse, pulling out her cell.

"What are you talking about?" Kit asked her.

"Maybe we need a lawyer who knows how to get creative," she said as she dialed the operator.

"Evan," Kit began, but her sister held up her hand. i 'No,' /i Kit thought to herself, i 'she couldn't be thinking what she thought she was.' /i When she heard the number that Evan asked for, she began to shake her head vehemently. "Sis, no! You said yourself," she began, but stopped when Evan looked at her, her face set with resolve.

Still, Evan paused before she hit the button on the phone. She might be bringing a shitstorm down on all of them by doing this. But JD needed his Daddy. And she needed Dean.

"Special projects division, please," she said, her tone becoming imperious as the voice on the other end of the phone, a delightfully perky sounding woman, came on the line. Evan waited, refusing to look at Kit, knowing that she would see the frown on her face.

"I hope you know what you're doing," Kit muttered.

"So do I," Evan replied softly. "Can I speak to Mr. McDonald please," she asked of the person who picked up next. Her face fell. "Do you have a number where I can reach him?"

"What's wrong?" Kit asked when she saw her sister's face grow pale.

"Thank you, no," Evan said and quickly snapped her phone closed. "Well that was a bust."

"Not there anymore?" Kit guessed.

"Umm, no," Evan said to her sister. "He's dead," she whispered in surprise. Even saying it aloud she couldn't believe it. It was a possibility that she had never thought of.

"Evan, I'm sorry," Kit said, rubbing her hand over her sisters back, unsure of what else to say. "But maybe it's a good thing. You left that place for a reason, Sis. Do you really want them back in our lives?"

"It was an idea," she sighed, drawing her legs up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them before laying her forehead on her knees.

"Give Caravetti time to figure out something," Kit ordered her gently. She saw the strain that the past two days had put on her sister and wrapped her arm around her shoulder. "That's why he paid the big bucks to go to the fancy lawyering school. He'll figure out something."

Dean waited while the guard shouted for the cell doors to be opened. The man then took the cuffs off of him and shoved Dean into the cell.

"Hey cellie," the other occupant said as the cell doors slammed shut behind Dean.

Turning to look at the man, he clenched his teeth when he saw the man sitting on his bunk, a picture in his hands. The visit with his lawyer had been a waste of time. The man had nothing new to tell him, and now he had to face a cellmate that was working his last nerve. God, he wanted out of there.

His jaw tightened when he realized that it was the picture of Evan and JD that had come in the mail for him the day before. "Did I say you could touch my stuff?" Dean snarled and grabbed the picture from the man's dirty, stubby hands.

"Come on man, a guy can get lonely up in here. I was just looking," the man, Dean thought that his name was Felix, said. "I saw her when she came to see you the other day. She's got a fine set of tits on her. And that other one? Wooooeeee, she's got legs that just won't quit, now doesn't she? Bet they'd feel real good wrapped," he never got to finish.

Dean's angry snarl broke into his words and his fist flashed out, striking the man in the mouth. "Don't you even think about them!"

Felix looked at him and spat the blood from his mouth. "Boy, you just made a big mistake." He intoned slowly and struck out at Dean.

Sidestepping him, Dean caught the man on the back of the neck and pushed him head first into the cell bars. He was unprepared for the arm that swung back and caught him in the eye. He felt the pain mix with the adrenaline and rush through him and realized that this was just what he needed to chase away the melancholy feeling that had filled him lately. "Actually, boy," Dean drawled. "I think you're the one who made the mistake."

** i Chapter Two i **

Kit ran into the living room suddenly and turned the stereo on, adjusting the dial until the music was just loud enough to carry through the living room and kitchen. Satisfied, she stepped back to see Evan watching her with a curious expression. The bass line of "London Bridge" carried through the room between them.

"Fergie, sis? Seriously Mom would die if she heard you playing this..."

"Shut up..." She turned to head back toward the stairway. "Oh.. And don't come upstairs for awhile..."

"Kit, what are you..?" At one, glaring, rabid look from her sister, Evan's mouth closed with a snap.

"Almost seven weeks... And Sam's in the shower..." Kit's eyes gleamed.

"Go," Evan waved. "I'll turn the stereo up if I have to. I do not wanna know what's going on up there... So unfair..."

Kit grinned, "I love you, Sis!" and ran up the stairs, chased by her sister's grumbling of "Don't keep him too long, we're going to see Dean!" At the top, she could hear the squeal of the shower shutting off, followed by rustling. She slipped into the bathroom just as Sam leaned forward to wipe part of the mirror free of steam. Shutting the door behind her and leaning against it, she appraised her husband. Water dripped off the ends of his hair to slide over tanned flesh, following the curve of his spine, only to stop when it soaked into the towel slung around his hips. She bit her lower lip to hold back a groan.

"What are you doing?" Sam asked without looking up as he searched through the travel bag on the counter.

"Spending some time with my husband," Kit responded, with a quirk to her lips.

Sam set his razor on the counter, "Kit, visiting hours are in a little over an hour. If I don't make it, I can't get in to see Dean until next week." He looked up and caught Kit's eyes in the mirror as he shook the can of shaving cream in his hand. "What?" When she didn't answer immediately, he sprayed the foam into his hand and started spreading it over his cheeks and jaw.

"I just realized I've never seen you shave before..." Kit shifted against the door.

"It's not that exciting, baby," Sam commented as he raised the razor to his face.

Kit's eyes drifted over his form in the mirror, the planes and angles of his chest, his abs, the muscles of his arms as he moved, and the smooth skin that was revealed in the wake of the razor's path over his face. "Looks pretty good from where I'm standing..."

"Kit, I skipped out on a study session to see my brother," Sam sighed.

"You aren't leaving just yet," Kit slid her hands around Sam's waist, hugging herself to his back as she looked over his shoulder. She leaned up on her toes, breathing in his ear. "Sam..." Her hands drifted over his chest as she pressed against him.

Sam laid his razor on the counter as he turned, leaning back against the counter and pulling Kit to stand between his legs. "Are you sure this is okay?"

"Very okay. Dr. Tancredi gave me the go-ahead today," Kit thrust out her lip as she ran over hands over Sam's arms. "Everything's been so crazy lately." He pulled her closer, dipping his head to catch her mouth. Kit's heart was pounding in her ears as her husband's teeth worried at her lower lip. She groaned and he took advantage, diving in and stealing her breath away.

"Maybe I can be a little late," Sam murmured as he pulled back for a breather. Kit grinned and pulled her shirt over her head. At the sight of her curves wrapped in a violet bra, one that had become his favorite because he swore it looked the same color as her eyes, he amended his statement. "I can definitely be late." He tightened his arm around Kit's waist, reaching for the doorknob that led to their bedroom.

"Nuh uh, I don't wanna wait any longer," Kit grabbed his wrist, stepping backwards until her back was pressed against the bathroom wall. She pulled an unresisting Sam toward her, caressing his jaw with the fingers of her free hand. She hummed her appreciation as he stepped into her embrace, one big hand sliding up under her skirt and hooking the leg around his waist. "Smooth," she murmured.

"I try," he quipped as he leaned in to nuzzle at her neck, making her tip her head back.

"I meant your face," she teased as she tugged at his towel.

His fingers found her under the skirt, eyes widening as he found nothing but bare, silky flesh. "I'm not the only one who's smooth, it seems."

Kit arched against the wall, begging for more of his touch. "I know," she breathed as she felt the heat of him against her.

Sam moved his fingers lower, caressing her intimately, "Kit, I'm sorry.. I know things have been crazy lately. I want to make it up to you."

"You're off to a good start," Kit moaned in response as his fingers curled upward, sliding slickly into her, pressing against her inner walls. She rolled her hips, grinding against his fingers with a whimper of his name. "Please, Sam... Don't stop..."

"God, Kit..." he withdrew enough to lift his wife up, supporting her as he yanked his towel away and plunged into her so suddenly that Kit dug her nails into his arm and the back of his neck in pleasured shock. She wrapped her legs around his waist, keeping him in her embrace as they moved together. Her arms twined around his neck as he dipped in for another heady kiss. "It's been too long. I don't..."

"Shhh..." She knew what he meant. It has been an emotionally exhausting couple of months for everyone. Dean's arrest during John's birthday party had just been the capper. With studying, researching ways to help Dean, and a new baby, they were both exhausted and worn out at night. Not that it mattered much because she hadn't even been able to make her postpartum checkup until today and Dr. Tancredi had been adamant that they not jump the gun. She didn't think either of them were going to hold out for marathon sex. She lifted herself with her thighs, making him groan as she ground against him. "If you forgot anything, I'll steer ya through the curves."

Sam chuckled in her ear huskily, making her shiver. "I think I remember how to drive." He punctuated the sentence with his hips, making Kit gasp even as she tilted her head to give him better access to her neck. His lips traced over the veins under her skin, making her shudder and undulate against him.

Over his shoulder, Kit could see them in the clearing mirror and moaned. Her eyes fluttered closed as Sam moved again, and she watched them together through her lashes, their bodies intertwined against the wall. He braced one hand against the wall above Kit's head, nipping her neck. "See something you like?"

"Feel something I like too..."

"Yeah?"

"Oh yes..." Kit hissed as he moved just the way she needed him to, her body clamping down on him, gripping him inside her, body shaking as he took her over the edge.

Sam groaned in her ear, turning them so that Kit was perched on the edge of the sink, his hands braced on the edge of the counter top as he drove into her. "Kit.. God... I need..."

"I know," Kit breathed, dragging her nails lightly over his chest. "I know, Sam."

He looked up, seeing their reflection in the mirror and groaned, driving forward harder. "Kit, we..."

"Uh huh. So good together," she cupped his face in her hands, pulling his mouth to hers as she arched up against him. Her tongue traced the seam of his mouth before sliding inside, delving into him in a slow, sinuous imitation of his own movements inside her. He groaned into her mouth, one hand coming up to grip the back of her neck possessively as he spilled into her.

Kit came again with a low moan that Sam swallowed up greedily. He broke away from the kiss to lay his forehead on his wife's shoulder, body heaving as he caught his breath. "That was okay, right?"

A slow wave of laughter bubbled up through Kit's chest and she threw her head back gleefully. "More than okay..."

Sam looked at her for a moment, reveling in a sound he hadn't heard in weeks. He kissed her quickly on the mouth before pulling away to slump against the wall. "Oh god, I needed that..."

Kit jumped off the counter with a grin, straightening her skirt. "We both did." She grabbed her shirt off the floor and pulled it over her head. "And you..." she poked Sam in the ribs playfully with her finger, "Will be in a much better mood when you go over to County and deal with those pricks."

"Shit, County! I have to get going!" Sam grabbed Kit and gave her a fierce kiss on the mouth before rushing to their bedroom.

"Tell Dean I said to keep his sorry ass out of trouble in there!" Kit shouted at his retreating back.

"Sam! Haul your ass down those stairs right now or I'm leaving you here!" Evan shouted as she hung over the banister.

"Evangeline!" her mother looked up from her book in the living room.

"I'm coming!" Sam shouted back, doors slamming upstairs.

"Oh, I swear, honestly," Victoria Callum shook her head.

"Better not be," Evan muttered mutinously under her breath. "Sam! I'm out the door. NOW!"

He thundered down the stairs. "Sorry, I'm running late, I know. My train was late and I just got in."

Evan looked at Sam darkly, and he flushed when he realized that she knew exactly what had been keeping him. "Sam, if you make me miss visiting hours, I will personally kick your ass on the front lawn of the jail so Dean can watch from upstairs." Opening the door, Sam blew through it without stopping and she called out over her shoulder as she crossed the threshold. "Bye Mom, we'll be back later."

Victoria looked up from her book as Kit came down the stairs with Jimmy in her arms. "You're not going with your sister, Katarina?"

Kit dropped into the chair, setting her son on the floor on his blanket. "He's only allowed two visitors per day and only if they come for the same session," she shrugged. "Sam missed the last one because he had an exam he couldn't miss. I'll go next time."

Victoria examined her middle daughter over the top of her book. Kit was tired; the stresses of being a newlywed with a baby were understandable, but Kit had been burning the midnight oil, as had they all, trying to untangle the legal web in which her brother-in-law had gotten himself tangled. "Katarina, you should go get some sleep. I don't mind watching James for an hour or so."

Kit shook her head, "Sam's expecting Rebecca to call him back with an update. The DA in St. Louis was deposing her today." The cell phone in her pocket rang and Kit shifted to retrieve it, checking the display. "That's her. Can you watch him for a minute?" Her mother shooed her off and Kit wandered toward the kitchen. "Becky? Yeah, it's Kit. Hey, no… Sam's on his way over…" her voice drifted off as she moved too far away to be heard.

From upstairs, a childish shriek drew Victoria's attention from Jimmy, who was lying on the floor kicking his feet in the air. Victoria picked up Jimmy, carrying him upstairs to retrieve his cousin. JD was sitting up in his crib, hands clenched around the bars. She cooed to him as she picked him up, setting him down on the floor at her feet. "Come on, young man. Let's go downstairs and see about a snack before dinner."

The trip back down the stairs was slow as JD took them one at a time with his chubby legs. At the bottom, Kit took Jimmy from her mother and settled him against her chest. "Hey kiddo, looks like Auntie Kit's in charge till Momma gets home. You hungry?" When her nephew beamed, she laughed and looked to her mother. "Mom, why don't you and Dad go out tonight? I've got these two and God only knows when Sam and Evan will get back. It could be hours. There's no point trying to cook for just the three of us."

"Your father is meeting Steven Brubaker for dinner to discuss Dean's situation."

"Mom, you've been friends with Diane Brubaker since we were all little. Call over there and see if she's going. I bet I can get the restaurant to change Dad's reservation."

Victoria made to demur, but at Kit's expression, she sighed. "All right. I'll call Diane and see if she was planning to join them."

Kit grinned. "Good, go have some fun. You deserve a break." Her mother went up the stairs to the master bedroom and Kit looked at the two little boys who were currently amusing themselves by pulling all the magazines from a rack on the floor. She was trying to separate them from her father's latest copy of the New Yorker when her cell phone rang from her pocket. "Y'ello?"

"Katarina."

"Hey, Father K. Now's kind of a bad time. Can I call you back?" _ i 'Like, say, after the kids fall asleep, so I can turn my back for a half-second?' /i _ Kit thought exasperatedly, as she untangled Jimmy from the blanket that had wrapped around his legs.

"Kit, I have something for you."

"Oh, Father K, you're lucky you said that to me and not Evan or your ears would start burning," she teased. "What's up?"

"Your grandmother's house was recently sold."

"Again? That's like the third time since she died." Kit shifted the phone to her other ear as she took the TV remote from JD and set it up on the entertainment center.

"Fourth actually, not that I'm keeping track. I received a call from Father Timothy at St. Luke's in Los Angeles. It seems one of his former parishioners bought the house. Something's happening there."

Kit sighed, "Father, I appreciate the call, but I'm on baby duty tonight and I really need to get back to them. Not to be rude, but why are you calling?"

"Katarina, they were attacked by an entity in the house. From their descriptions, it was your grandmother."

** i Chapter Three /i **

Evan was quiet when she came back into the house. Seeing Dean always made her feel smaller, a little helpless. He looked so out of place in his orange jail-issued scrubs, his hair shorter than normal thanks to the jail barber. He was tired, and it was apparent that he was anxious to get the hell out of there, though trying not to show it too much.

Visitation days were always hard on her, though now into their sixth week of his incarceration, they'd developed a strangely smooth rhythm. By unspoken agreement, Evan always got the first half of the time, whomever had come with her hanging back as far as possible to give them some privacy as they talked, hands splayed over the plexiglass that separated them. Sometimes, Evan brought a new photo, pressing it to the window so that Dean could see it.

Halfway through the visit, Dean would say something that brought tears to Evan's eyes and she would nod in response, holding the phone up as she stood, so that the other person could slide into the chair she'd just vacated. Evan would clasp her arms, holding herself tightly until it was time to go. She'd give Dean a watery smile and blow him a kiss, then trudge to her car. It wasn't until she was safely in the privacy of their bedroom that she'd let the tears fall.

"Hey Bud, come to Momma," Evan said as she came into the living room and found Kit sitting on the couch, Jimmy asleep in his bassinet beside her, JD curled up on her lap. He looked at her with bright eyes and held his hands up to her. "You haven't been giving Auntie fits have you?" She asked him.

"He was asleep until he heard the car pull in the driveway," she told her sister. She looked past Evan and saw Sam come into the living room and sit on the arm of the couch beside her. He leaned down and gave her a soft kiss of greeting. He then looked fondly down at his sleeping son.

JD pushed against Evan's shoulder as she cuddled him and looked around. He then looked back at her. "Daddy?"

It broke Evan's heart. Everyday JD would look around and then ask for his father. She took a deep breath, willing the heart that had stopped beating in her chest to start again. She tried to force a smile onto her face, make herself talk, but her throat closed up and she couldn't speak.

"Not yet Dude," Sam said to his nephew, reaching a hand out to give him a gentle chuck under the chin. When JD smiled and began to giggle, Evan sent Sam a grateful smile. Normally she was okay, she could keep her sadness under wraps until she was alone and no one could hear her.

"Has he eaten?" she asked Kit around the lump in her throat.

"Yeah, a few hours ago," she replied.

"Then it's time for you to go to bed, Bud," Evan said to him. "Do you want me to take Jimmy up?" Kit nodded and Evan grabbed the handle of the bassinet and carefully lifted it so not to wake her nephew.

"I take it that it didn't go well?" Kit said to Sam as soon as Evan was gone from the room.

"Dean was in a fight earlier this week. He was kind of banged up," Sam told her.

"Oh no," Kit murmured. "Is he okay?"

"Yeah, but we're going to file a grievance to see about getting Dean moved," Sam told her.

Kit shook her head slowly at how difficult everything had gotten.

Upstairs, Evan set the basinet down and gave JD a soft kiss before laying him in his crib. "Go to sleep munchkin," she said softly, pressing a kiss to her fingers and gently touching his nose. He giggled and then grabbed at his favorite stuffed car, a present from Dean.

She then picked up the basinet and set it on the change table. Carefully scooping her small nephew out of it, she kissed his soft downy head and set him in his own crib, pulling the blanket up over his little body and then went to the doorway. She flicked the light off, but stood there for a moment, watching them both. JD lay gibbering to himself while he played with his car but she knew that he would fall asleep shortly.

As she watched them both for a few moments, Evan tried to push aside her growing feelings of despair and sadness. She knew that the boys, even being as young as they were, picked up on the moods of those around them. And normally she was good at keeping it from them.

But today had been different.

They had become familiar with the routine of visiting days. But when they had walked into the visiting area earlier that day, Evan had taken one look at Dean and nearly lost it. He was sporting a black eye, a cut on his forehead and a split lip. One of the other inmates had tried to prove his machismo by starting a fight with Dean, being the new "fish". He'd laid the other guy out, but not before he'd taken a few hits himself.

"Hey, babe, I've taken a lot worse than this," Dean told her when she looked at his injuries. "Remember the knock on the head I took in Louisiana? That tree was worse than this guy. Don't worry about it. Now let's talk about the fact that you cut your hair." Dean said, looking at Evan's shortened locks. The wavy strands that had at one point reached half way down her back were now just a little lower than her shoulders.

"Yeah, JD kept pulling it," she said distractedly. "And you're changing the subject. Don't tell me not to worry about it," she snapped through the phone. "I'm gonna worry about you until you're home."

"Caravetti was here yesterday," Dean told her. "He said that Becky was giving a deposition today?"

"Yeah. She's supposed to phone when she's done to let us know how things went," Evan told him. Looking at the bruise around his eye, Evan felt the tears sting her eyes and she sniffled.

"Hey, don't cry babe," he said to her. "I'm gonna tell everybody what a pushover you are."

Evan let out a weak laugh and smiled at him. "I want you home," she said softly.

"I will be soon," he said confidently, then whispered to her. "Love you."

"Love you too," she whispered and then stood up, holding the phone out for Sam.

Sam gave her shoulder a soft squeeze as he took the phone from her and sat down. "Hey bro."

"Give me some good news Sammy," Dean said. He was glad to see his brother, but the weekly visits were growing hard on all of them. Each time they left and he was taken back to his small cell, he grew a little more depressed. He would stare at the pictures of the family that Evan had mailed him for hours, wishing he could be there with them.

"We're waiting for the results of the blood tests that they took from Dad and me," Sam told him. "The DA rejected the tests that we had done at a private lab. She wants the tests done through the city lab and apparently there is a backlog."

"What about this deposition that Becky was giving today?" 

"I'm waiting to hear back from her. She said she'd call tonight. I forwarded all my calls to Kit's phone so we wouldn't miss the call," referring to the jail's "no cell phone" policy for visitors.

"Do you think she'll do okay?" Dean said guardedly. The conversations between the visitors and inmates were monitored by the guards, so he had to be careful of what he said.

"Yeah, she'll be fine. She knows what's at stake here," Sam assured him.

"Sam, how come Dad hasn't come to see me?" Dean hadn't wanted to ask, but he couldn't hold it back any more.

"Dad's coming next week," Sam assured him. "He's been working with Edgar on something that will help your case."

"What's he doing?" Dean questioned, a puzzled look on his face.

"You'll see," was all Sam would say. His father had promised him not to say anything right now.

Dean and Sam chatted about things until visiting hours were over and then in their usual way, they said their good byes. Dean gave Evan a confident thumbs up before she walked slowly out of the jail. As soon as she cleared the doo,r she turned to Sam.

"I want you to get on the phone with Caravetti and get Dean moved out of where he is and into someplace secure."

"All we can do is file a grievance with the jail about not protecting Dean from violent inmates," Sam told her regretfully.

"Then tell him to file the damn grievance because if they don't do something to protect him, I am going to i personally /i throw the damn CO in there with the inmates and let them rip him to shreds!"

"I know you're upset, Evan," Sam began and then saw her face grow pale.

"I'm sorry Sam, I didn't mean to yell at you," she said miserably.

Seeing the look on her face, Sam pulled her into a brotherly hug and set his chin on the top of her head. "Just a little while longer."

"I don't know if I can," she said to him.

"I thought the Callums were made of sterner stuff," he joked.

"Bite me," Evan retorted, pushing away and wiping at her eyes, a wobbly smile on her face.

"Let's get out of here," he said, and they walked down the steps of the jail and made their way over to the Thunderbird.

Evan left the boys' room and went into her own room to change. On visiting day, she had to be careful as to what she wore to comply with the jail dress code. Kicking off her running shoes, she stripped off the long sleeved shirt and jeans and pulled on a t-shirt and a pair of comfy jeans. Going over to the mirror, she pulled her hair up into a pony tail. She'd had to wear it down so that it covered the tattoo on her neck, that was a jail no-no.

Making her way back down stairs, Evan went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. She wasn't really hungry, but she couldn't really remember the last time she'd had something to eat.

"I made you both some chicken salad sandwiches," Kit said as she came into the kitchen, Sam following behind her.

"Thanks Sis," Evan said as she pulled out the container of the premade filling. She set it on the counter and got a knife out while Sam dug through the bread box to find the rolls that Victoria had bought earlier.

Taking the knife from Evan, Sam cut them and she made the sandwiches. Kit got them down some plates and glasses, then grabbed the milk from the fridge. She then sat down at the table and waited until they were seated and eating before she began to speak.

"Becky called right after you left," she said to her sister. "The deposition went well. She told them that when the shifter knocked on the door that night, she thought it was Dean. It was night, the porch light wasn't shining on his face clearly and having only met Dean once, she believed him when he said he i was /i Dean. It wasn't until she opened the door and he walked in that she realized it wasn't him. When they asked her why she said that it was Dean, she told them that it was a misunderstanding - she'd been trying to tell them he was calling i himself /i Dean and that there was some resemblance. Afterwards she hadn't seen Sam or Dean again and had no idea that Dean had been listed as being dead until all of this came up. She hadn't even read the news reports because she was too upset over the whole thing."

"Do you think it will work?" Evan asked her as she picked at her sandwich.

"It might, we'll have to wait and see," Kit told her.

Evan groaned, "I'm sick of waiting. We have to wait for the court date, for the test results, for the DA to get off her high horse. Wait, wait, wait that's all we do."

Kit raised an eyebrow at her sister's outburst.

Evan sighed. "Sorry. I'm just frustrated," she said, pulling one foot up and tucking it up under her thigh as she picked apart her dinner.

"Well then, let's put your frustration to good use," Kit started. She had debated whether or not telling them about the call from Father K, but perhaps a distraction was exactly what they all needed. "I got a call from Father K today."

"Do you think he would give Dean a character reference?" Sam broke in. "That might go a long way with the judge."

"We can ask him," Kit assured him. "Father K has a job for us."

"No. No jobs until we get Dean home. That has to be our main focus right now," Evan said.

"Sis, we're doing all we can to get Dean out. This job is important," Kit urged.

"I can't believe you would even think of doing a job without Dean," Evan said, rising from her chair and dumping the torn pieces of her uneaten sandwich in the garbage.

"We used to hunt on our own all the time," Kit reminded her.

"Things change. We're in this together now," Evan said sharply.

"Evan, it won't hurt to find out what Father K has to say," Sam said to his sister-in-law. Normally he would agree with Evan. Hunting without Dean seemed wrong, but if it bothered his wife enough for her to insist, then something was going on.

"No. Not until we get Dean out," Evan said again and turned to walk out of the kitchen.

"It's at Nana's house, Evan," Kit said hurriedly as Evan passed through the doorway.

In the hall Evan stopped. She couldn't have heard that right. Turning, she walked back into the kitchen. "Excuse me?"

"Father K got a call from someone named Father Timothy in Los Angeles. His former parishioners bought Nana's house. They were attacked by something the other night."

"What were they attacked by?" Sam questioned his wife. He saw the look on her face when Evan came back and down in her chair.

"A spirit," Kit said vaguely.

"Sis, what did he say? Exactly," Evan asked her.

"He said that from the description, it was Nana."

"No way," Evan argued. "Nana wouldn't do that."

"Your grandmother is haunting her old house?" Sam tried to understand as he watched the girls argue.

"Nana was cremated and the ashes mixed with salt. That was in her will. She didn't want to come back. And she didn't want anything bringing her back," Evan said to her sister. "I don't think it's even possible for her i to /i come back!"

"What if it is. Sis?" Kit asked her. "I know Nana had that house warded up tight. She shouldn't have even been able to get in. But what if she did somehow?"

"She's been gone for years," Evan said, more to herself. "Why now?"

"Wards wear off," Sam supplied. "If it's been a while since they were renewed, they may have weakened and let her in." He looked at them both. "Have either of you been back since she died?"

"We went there to help Mom and Dad pack up her things and empty the house, but that was the last time. It was sold not long after and we never set foot in it again," Kit told him.

"I never wanted to go back," Evan said, her voice thick as she thought about the last time she had seen her grandmother. Catherine Rennie had been admitted into the hospital for an injury that the doctors had thought was self inflicted. Evan and Kit had surmised later that she had gotten it on one of her hunts, and knowing that he doctors wouldn't believe her if she told them the truth had kept quiet about it.

"We should check it out, Sis," Kit told her.

"I know. I just don't want to think that it's Nana," Evan grumbled. "Did you tell Mom and Dad?"

"No, I thought we'd better find out what we're dealing with first before we upset Mom."

"Sounds like a good idea," Sam said and Evan nodded her head in agreement.

"I told Father K that we would meet with him tomorrow at ten," Kit told them. "He's coming up from Ceres tomorrow morning to meet the family with us."

"Good. We'll need to know exactly what happened to them," Sam said.

"I'm going to go take a shower and then maybe go to bed early." Evan rose from her chair and bid them goodnight before leaving the kitchen and walking up the stairs to her bedroom.

"Are you going to be okay?" Sam asked his wife softly, watching the way her fingers were fidgeting. He reached across the table to take her hands in his, his serious gaze holding hers.

"Sam, this may be our grandmother scaring the shit out of these people. I don'' know how to handle that."

"I don't know what to tell you, babe," he said honestly. When he saw the anguished look on her face, he couldn't help but want to comfort her. Rising from his chair, he came around the table and pulled her up from her chair to wrap his arms around her and hold her tightly.

He wished he knew what to say, but he didn't. When he and Dean had gone home to Kansas to their old house and had found their mother's spirit there, it had been heart breaking for both of them. But her spirit had destroyed itself to protect her sons and the family that were living in their house. This didn't seem to be the case this time around.

This was not going to be an easy job.

I Chapter Four /i 

Sam pulled the Impala into the parking lot of the park at which they had agreed to all meet. The family, who had been staying with friends nearby, hadn't wanted to go near the house until they knew what was going on.

Pushing the car doors open, Sam, Kit and Evan climbed out of the Impala and walked over to the table where the foursome sat.

"I'm glad you came," Father Liam Ketcheson said as he left the family for a moment and came over to them.

"It's not like we'd turn you down, Father K," Kit said. 

"Thank you, Katarina," he smiled. "It's good to see you again, Samuel. How is school going?"

"It's going well," Sam told him, shaking the man's hand.

"And the baby?" Liam had, just after Jimmy had been born, performed the same ritual over him that he had over JD.

"Growing like a weed," Kit said with a fond smile.

"Hello, Evangeline," the priest said, and braced himself for her usual greeting.

"Hello Father," Evan greeted him in a sober tone.

Liam was surprised by the change, but when he looked at her, he noticed the strain on her face. He knew about the trouble that Dean had gotten into, and knew that it had to be weighing on her. "How is JD?" He asked her.

"He's okay. Misses his daddy," she said to him with a small smile.

"If there's anything I can do to help," he began, but Evan cut him off.

"So, this is the family?" She said, nodding her head in the direction of the three people sitting huddled at the picnic table.

Understanding her need to change the subject, Liam nodded and lead the three of them over to the picnic table where the three sat. "Evelyn, Jeffrey, I would like you to meet Sam and Katarina Winchester and Evangeline Callum," he said softly and then turned to the three of them. "Evelyn and Jeffrey Talbert and their eldest daughter, Izzy."

"Hi," Kit said softly, her voice purposely gentle as she held her hand out to them. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

"To meet you too. Father Ketcheson said that you may be able to help us," Evelyn said without preamble.

"We're going to try," Sam said as he sat down on the opposite side of the table.

"Can you tell us what happened?" Evan asked them as she sat down beside Sam and looked at the three of them intently. She saw the look that passed between the three of them and couldn't help but smile. She could only imagine their trepidation. Something like this was not easy to talk about. Not if you didn't want to appear crazy that is. "Don't worry, as crazy as it sounds, we're here to help." 

"Things like this aren't supposed to happen. They aren't supposed to be real," Evelyn began, looking at them with a scared, almost disbelieving, look on her face. "How is it possible?"

"It's hard to explain Mrs. Talbert," Kit said softly. "What did you see?"

The three of them listened intently as Evelyn told them of what she had encountered in the kitchen of the house.

"Is that the same thing you saw?" Sam asked Jeffrey, who wrapped his arms around his wife's shaking shoulders.

"No," Jeffrey shook his head and then told him what he saw. They paid particular attention when he told them the description of the apparition that he saw. Kit and Evan looked at each other. It definitely sounded like Catherine Rennie. Despite hearing it, neither of them wanted to believe it.

"What did you see Izzy?" Kit asked the young girl who had moved away from her parents to the end of the seat. She stared sullenly down at her hands and refused to look at them. "Izzy?"

"I didn't see anything," she muttered, still not looking at them.

"Izzy, tell them what you saw," her mother told her, reaching out for her daughter's hands.

The young girl pulled them away and then looked at them all, her face shrouded in anger. "I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to be here. I want to go home!" She screamed suddenly and then climbed off of the seat and ran to the edge of the park.

"Izzy!" Evelyn shouted after her daughter, rising from the picnic table.

"Let me talk to her," Kit said to the woman and then walked after Izzy, letting the young girl get herself together.

"This has been hard on her," Jeffrey said to Sam and Evan. "All of us. We came up here for a fresh start. It's not working out that way," he finished ruefully.

"How long ago did you move up here?" Evan asked them.

"A little over a month ago," Evelyn said, wiping at her eyes. "Jeffrey is a stock broker. The stress of his job was almost too much for us. He was never home. So we decided to move out of the city and Jeffrey works from home," she told them.

"Before what happened the other night, had there been anything else strange happening in the house?" Sam asked them.

"I don't think so," Jeffrey began and then looked at his wife.

"I don't know if you would call it strange," she began, and Sam pulled out his notebook and began making notes as she spoke.

Kit slowed her steps as she approached where the young girl sat on one of the swings, her legs dangling in the gravel as she idly pushed herself along. She didn't want to frighten her anymore than she already was. "Izzy?"

"Go away," she said miserably, hugging her arms tighter around the chains of the swing.

"Izzy, I know what happened was frightening," Kit said as she sat down on the swing next to her. "But Sam, Evan and I are going to help. You'll be able to go home soon."

"That's not my home. My home is in Los Angeles," Izzy said sharply, she then hung her head. "I didn't even want to move up here. If we'd stayed in LA, none of this would have happened."

"I know it doesn't seem like it, but your parents were just trying to do what they thought was best," Kit said gently.

Izzy sighed and glanced at Kit. "I know. But it still sucks here.."

"Once we get the house cleared out, you might find that you like it up here," Kit smiled. "Evan, she's my sister, and I grew up here. It's not that bad."

"No offense, but you guys grew up here and look at you now," Izzy said skeptically. She then looked at Kit. "Father Ketcheson said that you do this for a living. Is that true?"

"Yeah, we do. It kind of runs in our family," Kit told her.

"You guys have a weird family then," Izzy muttered.

Kit laughed. "I guess we do," she conceded. "What did you see, Izzy?"

The young girl was quiet for so long that Kit didn't think she was going to answer her. When she finally did begin to speak, Kit's heart went out to her. Her voice cracked as she described what she had seen. When she finished, Kit reached out and touched the girls shaking shoulders.

"We're going to get it, Izzy. Whatever it is, we'll get it," Kit assured her.

"Are you sure you can?" The girl's voice sounded so small that Kit almost heard what she said.

"That's what Evan, Sam and I do," Kit smiled at her. "It's toast."

They left the Talberts in the park with Father Ketcheson with the promise that they would call him once they had gone to the house to check it out. He had assured them that the Talberts would be given a place to stay by the local church so they could take the time they needed.

"What did Izzy see?" Sam asked Kit as he pulled the Impala out of the parking area and headed in the direction that Evan pointed him in.

"She saw a black shape form out of the water. And she said that contact with it made her skin tingle."

Evan shifted in the back of the car and draped her arms of the seat and looked at her sister. "I''ve heard of spirits manifesting in water, usually water wraiths using it to show themselves, but making her skin tingle? I've never heard of that."

"Being younger maybe she's more sensitive to the spirits around her?" Sam questioned them as Kit directed him around another corner.

"What did the Talberts see?" Kit asked them.

"He said he saw a woman with short red hair and violet eyes. She was almost transparent," Sam replied. "And she was angry. Screamed at him to get out of her house."

"And she said that the kitchen grew really cold, she felt cold hands. And she saw her breath, which formed into a face that yelled at her to get out."

"So three different manifestations all at the same time," Kit said, making notes.

"And at least one of them looks like Nana," Evan grumbled, flopping back against the seat of the car.

"What the hell is going on in that house?" Sam muttered.

"Sam, slow down," Kit and Evan both said a few minutes later. Sam slowed the car as they approached the house.

The large Victorian duplex sat in the middle of a manicured lawn, the white walls gleaming almost antiseptically. A border of white rocks ran along the driveway and the front of the house.

Sam pulled the car up on the opposite side of the street and shut off the engine. The three of them sat there for a few minutes looking at the house that seemed so out of place amongst the other homes around it.

"It looks so different," Kit said a few moments later, breaking the almost uncomfortable silence that had settled over them.

"I remember when it was yellow," Evan said softly. "Buttercup yellow."

"And Nana always had flowers, geraniums, growing along the front and down the side of the driveway," Kit smiled as the memory flashed into her mind.

"I hated geraniums," Evan groused as she looked at the house. She suddenly wished for the bright red flowers along the drive.

"We should get started," Sam said. Although they weren't back under the best of circumstances, the memories that Kit and Evan were having were the ones that he had always wanted for his brother and himself. Having grown up hunting evil, they had never had a stable home, had never been in a place long enough to call home.

"Let me go first," Evan said suddenly, putting her hand on Sam's shoulder when he turned to push the car door open. He frowned at her slightly and she gave him a small smile. "Please."

Sam nodded and gave her the keys that the Talberts had given him. Evan slid across the back seat and pushed the door open. Closing it gently, she glanced up and down the street and then started across it. Pausing at the end of the driveway, she looked up at the house and made herself walk up towards the house.

"Is Evan okay?" Sam asked Kit worriedly, watching the slow almost stilted progress Evan was making up the driveway.

"She will be. Evan was always closer to Nana. I guess because she was oldest. When Nana lifted the veil and we could see what was happening, it was Evan who went and figured out that all of Nana's hunting stuff was in the attic. The stuff that we moved over to Mom and Dad's."

"How old were you guys when she died?"

"Thirteen. She was sixteen. She had just gotten her drivers licence and would drive us over to Nana's almost every day," Kit smiled with remembrance. "It was Evan and I that found Nana on the floor of the kitchen. We figured out later that she'd been hunting something the night before and gotten hurt. We think she was hiding how badly, but it got out of hand and she collapsed. Evan and I came over after school and found her. She died in the hospital not long afterwards. And that was when Evan broke the lock on the attic door."

"I'm so sorry, Kit," Sam said, taking her now trembling hand. When he and Dean had gone home to their old house in Lawrence, he had been sad because he had never gotten to see his mother, had never had the normal childhood that Kit and Evan had once had. But he realized now that sometimes all of the memories that they'd had weren't always good ones.

"I was angry with Nana for not telling us what she did. And I was never going to do what she did. Evan on the other hand studied everything Nana had. And although she didn't go looking for things to hunt, she was prepared. But when she decided to start hunting full time, she threw herself into it."

"Maybe I should go this one alone," Sam said, suddenly worried about the two of them.

"No. We'll be okay," Kit assured him and then got out of the car, going around to the trunk and waited for him to join her. When he popped open the trunk, Kit smiled when she saw that Evan had gone OCD on Dean's cache of weapons, organizing them all. "We better undo this before Dean sees it."

"I don't know," Sam said with a chuckle. "It makes it a lot easier to find what we need." Rifling through the labeled duffel bags, he grabbed the one marked, "Ghosts". Being in a heavily populated neighborhood, he left the attention-grabbing shotguns behind in favor of several wrought iron fireplace pokers. Slamming the trunk lid down, he passed one of the rods to Kit and said, "Shall we go?"

I Chapter Five /i 

Evan stood on the front veranda of the house and took a deep breath. This couldn't be happening. It wasn't possible. She stopped herself and frowned knowing, especially after all she had seen, that anything was possible.

Putting the key in the lock, she turned it and threw the front door open. Taking hold of the cross and rose pendant that Dean had given her, Evan crossed over the threshold and was immediately thrown back into time as memories flooded through her.

The scent of cherry pie baking in the kitchen assailed her. Lavender and sulphur chased closely behind it. She could feel the warmth of the house surround her as she took another step inside. Looking around, she saw the sun filtering in through the sunny yellow curtains her grandmother had hung in the living room. She could hear music coming from the old record player that her grandfather had bought years ago as an anniversary present. Simon and Garfunkel. Her grandmother had been crazy about them.

"Nana, Nana!"

She froze as two little girls came running up the front stairs from behind her, red pigtails flying, squeals of laughter filling the air, and Evan gasped as she recognized herself and Kit as children. They ran over to the tall red-haired woman who knelt down and scooped them up in her arms. Her heart leapt into her throat as the woman stood and seemed to star at her with wide violet eyes.

"Nana," Evan whispered softly, reaching out to her.

"How are my girls?" The woman asked of them, hugging them tightly and kissing the tops of their heads.

"I missed you, Nana," young Kit said, wriggling in the woman's arms.

"I missed you more," child Evan retorted.

"Did not," Kit pushed at her sister's shoulder.

"Did too," Evan answered, pushing back at Kit's shoulder.

"Evangeline, Katarina," the woman said softly, her tone holding just a bit of warning.

"Sorry, Nana," the girls said together.

"That's better," Catherine Rennie said to her granddaughters.

"Can we stay the weekend?" Child Evan asked her grandmother.

"Momma said that if you said we could, we could," Little Kit said.

"Of course you can girls. This is your house too," Nana said and grown up Evan shuddered again as it appeared that Catherine was staring at her. "This will always be your home."

"Evan? Are you okay?" Kit's voice broke through to her and Evan looked at her sister sharply and then back to the living room, hoping for just one more peek at her grandmother. But all she saw was the Talberts' furniture.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Evan said. "I saw her, Kit." She then shook her head, knowing that it wasn't her grandmother she saw. "I saw something. A memory, I think."

"What did you see?" Kit asked her gently.

"I saw you and me. With Nana. In the living room. Remember that old record player?"

"Yeah," Kit nodded and smiled. "I remember dancing in the living room with her. Simon and Garfunkel."

"She always had cherry pie baking," Evan said and then walked down the hallway to the kitchen and looked out large window into the back yard and smiled. "They're still there, Kit. Nana's cherry trees," she pointed to the two large trees. She looked at Sam who had followed behind Kit, and saw the look on his face and chuckled. "Kit and I used to dare each other to climb the trees and steal the cherries."

"That was until I fell out of the tree and broke my arm," Kit found herself laughing.

Looking at her sister, Evan declared, "Nana can't be the one haunting this house."

"So let's find out what is," Sam said and put the duffel bag down on the table and unzipped it. Rooting around inside, he pulled out an EMF reader for each of them. "We'll each take a floor, check it out and meet back here."

Taking the reader, Sam headed towards the basement door. He flipped the switch and when the light didn't come on, he went back to the table and pulled a flashlight out of the duffel bag.

"Be careful," he told them before switching on the flashlight and started down the stairs.

"Watch the bottom step, it wobbles," Kit warned him and then headed out of the kitchen to go upstairs.

"I guess I'll take this floor," Evan said to herself as she flipped on the EMF reader. She frowned when the reader stayed silent. She flicked the LED display with her fingers and watched it again, but it stayed stubbornly silent. "Okay, so where are all the freaky things?" She muttered as she walked down the hall to the living room.

Kit made her way upstairs, watching the EMF reader as she moved. The display stayed quiet as she made her way through the rooms. Going into the bathroom, she had frowned as there was a slight blip on the screen.

"That's what I wanted to see," she said with a smirk and then stopped. Holding the EMF out in front of her, Kit turned in a slow circle. As she turned towards the tub, the blips grew stronger.Walking over to the tub, she knelt down and sniffed the air carefully, detecting a lingering trace of sulphur.

Reaching into the tub, she ran her fingers along the inside. There was a slick residue clinging to the porcelain. Immediately her fingers began to tingle. She wiped her hand over her pants and the tingling stopped. "Okay," she said to herself. "What leaves behind a slick goo that tingles on contact?" It was something to look up in Nana's journals.

Rising to her feet, Kit turned and stopped as a blackness spread across the tile floor. The EMF reader spiked wildly. She drew the tip of the wrought iron rod through the darkness and watched as it seemed to shrink and separate from itself along the path that the rod had drawn. It then started to coalesce back into itself and spread quicker along the tiles. "Hm, this isn't good."

Kit put one foot on the underside of the toilet seat and kicked it up before stepping up onto the rim of it and trying to jump over the growing blackness. As soon as her feet hit the tile floor on the other side near the door, the dark shadow snapped out and twisted around her ankles, dragging her back from the door. Kit reached out for the door handle and grasped hold of it. She grunted in pain as the shadow pulled back on her, trying to pull her free of the knob. The knob twisted and the door swung open, knocking Kit back towards the shadow.

Sam made his way carefully down into the basement, watching the bottom step as Kit had warned. As he stepped onto the basement floor, the flashlight flickered and went out. He banged the end against his hand and it flickered to life again. The beam cut weakly though the dimness of the basement, but between it and the sickly light filtering in through the dusty windows he could make out the shapes of boxes and other items.

Looking down at the EMF reader he saw that it was silent. Flashing the light into another corner of the basement he started to move away from the stairs and the LED display spiked. He took a step back and it went silent again. Taking another step it spiked once again. Looking up, he flashed the light around but saw nothing. He gave the EMF reader a shake and then looked up again.

He took a startled step back when he saw the figure before him. Her short red hair floated around her and her violet eyes blazed with anger. When she reached out for him, he saw the charred skin of her arms, felt the heat burning within her when she grabbed at his arm. am swung the wrought iron rod through the apparition and saw its face twist in pain and anger.

"Get out of my house!" it screamed before sending his arms up in flames.

Evan made a pass through the living room with nothing from the EMF reader. She shook her head. It didn't make any sense. She had seen something before. Had it been just a memory? There was no evidence of spectral activity where she had seen it. Nothing.

She walked back up the hallway to the kitchen. She stopped when there was a slight blip on the LED and she looked up. There was nothing in front of her, but when she turned, she caught sight of herself in the mirror that hung on the wall. But something was wrong with the image. It looked different for some reason.

Taking a step closer to the mirror, she found that the image remained the same. As she stared at it, another image seemed to separate itself from her own and Evan gasped. The face of the image changed to an older version of her. The long red hair seemed to fade away and she could see streaks of white in it. The image gazed on her with a fondness that reached down into Evan and touched her heart.

"Nana," she whispered. She felt her breath catch in her throat as she saw the images mouth move, but she couldn't hear anything.

Evan jumped when she heard an angry scream from the basement. She glanced up the hall and then back at the mirror but the image had disappeared. Hearing a banging on the basement door, she ran up the hall way into the kitchen, bursting through the swinging doors.

She took a step deeper into the kitchen and felt a chill surround her. It seemed to invade her lungs and freeze the breath within them. She could feel the coldness creeping along her skin, making it burn from the cold. When she looked up she saw the air around him condense and form a face before her. She could just make out the indistinct features before it seemed to rush at her.

Gasping for breath, she swung the wrought iron rod blindly at it and it split the face in two. Stumbling towards the basement door, she pulled on the handle. Her head was growing dizzy from the lack of breath and she felt herself start to sink to her knees.

Sam heard the knob turn and threw his shoulder against the door. It swung open and he toppled to his knees. He righted himself immediately and began to wipe at his arms, brushing at flames that were no longer there. He looked down at them and found that there was not even a mark on the sleeves of his shirt.

"Evan!" He cried a moment later when he heard her gasp and her body start to fall backwards. Pushing himself to his feet, he grabbed her arm and dragged her out of the kitchen. As the doors swung closed behind them, he pulled her up into a sitting position and slammed the heel of his hand against her back. She jerked forward with a groan, but it was enough to get her to draw a deep breath. "Are you okay?"

She nodded weakly and then started to draw quick breaths into her lungs. "Kit?" She croaked and looked around her.

They heard the scream from upstairs and Sam rose to his feet and took off up the hall and then up the stairs two at a time. Evan scrambled to her feet and wobbled up the hall behind him. She grabbed the banister and half pulled, half ran up the stairs. She skidded to a stop beside Sam and the two of them peered into the blackened bathroom, finding Kit being pulled back into the darkness. It crept up along her legs, even as she tried to kick them free of it.

"Kit!" Sam yelled and then reached towards her, careful not to step in the blackness but her hands were too far away. He made to step into the bathroom.

"Don't let it touch you!" Kit yelled at them.

"I can't reach her!" Sam said angrily as he reached out towards her, but with the blackness creeping into the hall, it made it difficult.

"Sam, hold onto me," Evan said before stepping in front of him. She braced her feet against his and he held tightly to one hand. She leaned forward and threw one hand out to her sister. "Kit, grab my hand!"

Kit let go of the knob with one hand and reached out for her sisters, grasping it tightly. Evan clamped her fingers around Kit's slender wrist. Kit then grasped tightly with her other hand.

"Sam, pull us back," Evan yelled and Sam pulled as hard as he dared, not wanting to wrench Evan's shoulder too much.

Kit struggled against the hold on her legs. "Pull harder!" she screamed.

Evan cried out in pain as Sam pulled on her arm and the swirling blackness pulled against Kit's legs. Glancing up, she saw the black begin to form into an indistinct face. "Oh shit," she cried and tried pulling at Kit harder. "Sam pull! Harder!"

Sam heard Evan's cry and pulled harder despite the scream that was wrenched from her as pain seared through her shoulder. Letting go with one hand, he wound his arm around her waist and then the other. Gripping her waist tightly he pulled her back against him, drawing Kit a little further away from the gathering black mass.

Evan gripped at Kit's hands and pulled her towards her as Sam pulled them back into the hall. Seeing a flicker of something at her side, she glanced over and saw a flash of red just before the black seemed to scream in pain and let go of Kit's legs. The three of them flew back against the wall in a heap.

"Okay, I think we need to get out of here an regroup," Evan panted heavily, already starting to climb to her feet.

"I agree," Kit wheezed. She tried to rise, but the tingling in her legs kept her still. "I can't move."

Sam pulled her arm over his shoulder and wound one arm around her waist. "Up we go," he said as he heaved her off the ground and up against his side.

Evan stood on the other side of Kit, her hand laid on her sister's back, her one arm tucked up against her chest to protect her shoulder. She glanced behind them when they got to the top of the stairs, a cry of dismay leaving her as the shadow spread up the hall at their heels, seeming to devour anything in it's path.

"Sam, we gotta move!" She urged him.

When they got to the top of the stairs, Evan screamed as something slammed into their backs, pitching them forward down the stairs. Sam turned his body so Kit was protected in the circle of his arms as he slid down the stairs, his shoulder and back striking the steps as he went. He tucked his head down against Kit's, holding her tightly until they came to a rest at the bottom. Pain flared through his back and shoulders, but as he moved each part of his body he found that nothing was broken.

"Kit, you okay?" He asked her immediately, running his hands over her arms and back.

"I'm fine," she breathed moving her legs slowly. The tingling was subsiding a little, but it still flared up from her toes. Evan?" she looked around.

Evan had grabbed onto the banister with one hand and was struggling to right herself, but whatever force had struck them was battering at her back and sides, her grip lessening with each blow. She screamed sharply as her fingers gave way and she toppled over. Tucking her head down, she tried to make her body go limp as it tumbled down the stairs. She cried as her already tender shoulder struck one of the stairs and her body turned. She whimpered and saw stars floating before her eyes as her forehead bounced off of one of the railings. When she came to rest at the bottom of the stairs, she groaned sharply.

"Sis!" Kit cried and crawled over to her. She cupped her chin and lifted her head. "Are you alright?"

"Thick head," Evan muttered just before she lost consciousness for a moment.

"Sam, help me," Kit said quickly and he scrambled over to her, pulling Evan up into a sitting position. She groaned and dazed eyes snapped open.

"It's coming," Sam said to them as he looked up at the stairs and saw the shadow devouring it.

"We gotta go Sis," Kit said and rose to her feet and wobbled for a second before falling, her legs still tingling from whatever had held her.

"Sam, get her," Evan mumbled and then shook her head, trying to clear the fog from it.

"Are you going to be okay?" He asked her as he helped Kit up.

Evan waved her hand and then slowly made her way to her feet. Her head swam and she felt nauseous, but she followed behind them as Sam made his way to the door. He pushed his way through and Evan came up behind him, pulling it closed as they got out onto the porch. Sam continued down the stairs and across the lawn to where the car sat.

"Sam, it's gone. The tingling is gone," Kit said as he opened the car door and set down on the seat.

"What the hell was that thing?" He asked as he knelt down and ran his hands over her legs to make sure that there were no other injuries.

"I don't know. I've never seen anything like that before," Kit said and looked over at her sister who was leaning against the side of the car. "Sis, you're bleeding."

Evan put her hand to her forehead and brought away her fingers, finding them covered in blood. "Dammit," she muttered and walked around the back of the car to the other side and reached in through the open window and snapped open the glove compartment. Pulling out some napkins, she touched them to her head and tried to wipe away the blood. She then wadded up the bloody cloth and tossed it into garbage bag. "Whatever that was, it's not Nana."

Digging in her jeans pocket she pulled out her cell phone and quickly dialed Father Ketcheson's number. He picked up on the first ring.

"Evan? Did you find something?"

"Yeah. I don't know what the hell it is, but I can tell you it's not Nana. This is going to take a little longer than planned."

"I'll tell the Talberts," Liam replied. "Are you guys okay?"

Evan smirked. "We're always okay," she said and then looked at Sam and Kit and found them staring at her. "But now I'm pissed. We're going to have to do some studying."

"Keep in touch," he said.

"You bet," she said and then snapped the phone closed.

"Let's get back to the house and see what we can find," Sam suggested, helping Kit into the back seat of the car before closing the door. Evan pulled open the passenger door and climbed in. She groaned as she pulled the door closed with her sore shoulder.

Sam slid in behind the wheel and started the car. Just before they pulled away from the curb they looked at the house. It hadn't changed at all, the sunlight still shone over the clean white lines of it, but the darkness of the windows seemed to stare soullessly out at them, mocking them.

"Laugh it up, ya pile of bricks. We'll be back to raze your ass," Evan muttered as Sam drove away from the house.

i Chapter Six /i 

"Could it be that thing that we went after in the sewer before?" Evan asked her sister as she flipped through the journal on the coffee table before her. She shifted uncomfortably and adjusted the ice pack wrapped around her shoulder.

JD looked up from where he had been sitting on her lap, his arms wrapped around her waist, his head laid on her chest listening to the beat of her heart. His wide eyes focused on the bandage on her head and he reached up to slowly stroke her hair, careful not to touch the bandage. It had taken him a while, but he had finally settled down from when they had first come home and he had seen the blood on his mother's face.

"It's okay baby," she said softly and stroked his soft hair. A moment later he laid his head back down, listening to her heart once again.

"The Sayflor?" Kit asked, looking up from the journal she had been reading. She heard a gurgling from the bassinet beside her chair and looked down at Jimmy, who was happily playing with the stuffed car his aunt and uncle gave him. "No It didn't smell like rotting pumpkins."

Evan pulled a face at the remembrance. "Okay, so not a Sayflor, but it looked like one. And you said that it made your legs tingle."

"Yeah, like when they fall asleep and you get the pins and needles," Kit explained, leafing through the journal on her lap.

"I think I have something here," Sam said a few minutes later. He turned the journal that he was reading around and showed them a picture of a shadow like presence. "An Umbra demon," he read. "A description of it from back in the eighteen hundreds states that it envelopes it's victims in a shroud of darkness. Its victims then succumb to a strange feeling through out throughout their body as it leaches the life out of them."

"Great, life sucking shadow," Evan said as she flipped through the journal. "How do we kill it?"

"We burn it," Sam replied, looking through the journal entry. "We draw it into sunlight and the UV rays destroy it."

"I'm suddenly glad I live in the Sunshine State," Kit said with a smart grin.

"We're home!" Edgar called from the lower level of the house. "Where is everyone?"

"Up here Dad," Kit answered.

"Oh no, the books are out again," Victoria said as she came up the stairs into the attic. "Evangeline, what happened to you?" Going over to her daughter, she tipped her head up and inspected the wound beneath the bandage.

"I had a run in with a bannister," she muttered and tugged her head free of her mothers fingers."I'm fine."

"What's going on?" John asked as he followed Edgar into the living room. The two men had been spending more and more time together once John had laid out his plan to help in getting his eldest son out of jail. Edgar, with the help of his influence had done whatever he could to help.

"Umbra demon. Nasty one," Sam told his father and handed him the journal that he had been reading.

After reading the description, John handed it to Edgar who scanned the entry. "I haven't seen anything in the papers."

"This didn't come from the papers," Evan said slowly and then looked at her sister. They hadn't wanted to say anything to their mother about what Father K had told them, trying to spare her any more upset, but they knew that they couldn't.

"Mom, Father K called me," Kit began and then told her the rest of the conversation. "That's where we were. Something's in Nana's house," she finished.

"So you clean the house," John said to them, taking a seat on the couch.

"This Umbra thing isn't alone. Sam saw something different in the basement. I was nearly flash frozen in the kitchen and Kit found this thing upstairs. That's three completely different manifestations," Evan said and then paused. "And I saw Nana."

"Sis, that was just a memory," Kit said to her.

"No. I saw her again. In the mirror," Evan told her. "She was trying to tell me something, but I couldn't hear her or understand what she was saying."

"Is this like when you saw Stacy?" Kit asked her, remember when Evan had seen the spirit of the dead girl that had possessed her and nearly drove her mad.

"No. Nothing like that at all. I saw Nana there, and I saw myself."

"Why didn't you say something earlier?" Kit asked her sister.

"I didn't believe what I saw at first, but the more I think about it, the more I'm sure."

"Are you saying that your grandmother's spirit is still in the house?" Edgar asked of his daughter, then glanced at his wife, seeing her pale.

"That's impossible. Mother wanted to be cremated, and her ashes salted so she couldn't come back. So she would rest," Victoria argued, shaking her head. "You're wrong. You didn't see her."

"Mom," Evan began but stopped when she saw the look on her mothers face.

"You're wrong. There is no way your grandmother is in that house," she shook her head even more vehemently. "No, it's not possible," she stated firmly and then walked out of the living room.

"Mom," Evan and Kit called after her, but Edgar rose quickly.

"I'll talk to her. You guys find out what is going on in that house," he made for the hallway, but stopped at the door. Turning back to them, he said softly. "If it is your grandmother, do something about it."

Kit and Evan looked at each other and sighed. It was so much easier to destroy the evil things when they were unknown spirits and demons. But now it seemed that their grandmother's spirit was involved, and that put a whole new spin on things.

"So what do we do now?" Kit asked.

"We break it down. Exorcize each of the manifestations," Sam said.

"Um, that Umbra kicked our collective asses today. If we do this one at a time, it's going to kill us," Evan said.

"I want to know why Nana's spirit is in the house anyway. She died in the hospital. And how did any of the demons get in? She had that house warded tight," Kit muttered.

"How long ago did she die?" John asked them.

"Eleven years ago," Evan told him.

"Wards wear off," John reminded them.

"But if she was cremated, then why is she back? She should be resting in peace," Kit stated.

"Was there anything that you might have left in the house? Anything that was part of her?" Sam asked.

"I don't think so," Kit said. "The house was cleared out completely when it was sold."

"Besides, we have all of her things here," Evan added. "If there was anything that had been part of her, wouldn't that have brought her _here_?"

"How long did she live in the house?" John asked them, pondering.

The girls looked at each other, trying to remember. "Thirty years?" Kit said.

"At least," Evan answered. "You think maybe all the years she lived in the house might have dr her spirit back?"

"It's possible," John replied. "If you live somewhere that long, you end up putting a lot of blood, sweat and tears into it."

"Okay, I can buy that bringing Nana back to the house. But the other manifestations?" Kit questioned him.

"Do you know the history of the house?" Sam asked her even as he reached for the laptop. Powering it up, he set it on the coffee table.

"Nana and Papa bought the land and had the house built just after they were married. Papa designed it. Made the one side of the house for living, and I seem to remember him having an office on the main floor of the other side. And Nana turned the second floor and the attic into a training and research area. That's where she kept all of the stuff we have in the attic here," Evan told them.

"What did your grandfather do?" John questioned. Could it be possible that their grandfather had unknowingly let the demon into his home?

Kit smiled. "He was a doctor. Which actually came in really handy," she smiled.

Evan grinned as she flipped through the journal. "When we were kids, Nana used to say that she had to marry a doctor because she was such a klutz and was always hurting herself. It wasn't until after she died that we realized why she was hurt a lot of the time."

"What about the land? Could there have been something about the land that would draw these demons and spirits to it? Before they built the house?"

"I remember a note that Nana made about the land," Kit said and then began looking through the journals that they had brought down from the attic. "Dammit, Evan, you've got to stop organizing the journals. I can't find anything," Kit muttered.

Evan looked at her sister and stuck her tongue out before she reached over to a pile of journals and tugged one free. She tossed it over to Kit. "Nana's personal journal."

Flipping through the pages, Kit stopped to scan one. She frowned. "Nothing special about the land. They looked back through the land deeds and didn't find anything. But that doesn't mean that there isn't something there," she said.

"Or since. The house has been sold a number of times since she died," Evan murmured and then looked at her sister. "Maybe the other owners had similar experiences, but didn't want to say anything. Sam?"

"I'll check," Sam quickly brought up a webpage and typed in the search information. He shook his head when the results came back with no results. "There's nothing in the news achieves about any deaths there. But I'll run a more detailed search."

Scanning the pages of the journal before her, Evan said suddenly. "Hey, here's the spirit that tried to turn me into a popsicle. It's a Deleka spirit. It's Norwegian in origin, generally found in colder climates. It's similar to an air elemental. And it attacks the victim and robs them of their breath of life," she read.

"So we have an Umbra and a Deleka. Two totally different kinds of spirits," Kit said. "Two that you wouldn't normally find together."

"What about the one that Sam saw? The one that tried to barbeque him?" Evan asked her sister.

"What?" John sat up straighter and looked at his son. "It burned you?"

"No," Sam assured his father. "It made me think that it was. On my arms."

"Your arms?" Kit and Evan both asked him and then looked at each other with a frown. 

"Yeah, what about it?" Sam asked his wife.

"When Nana died in the hospital, there were scorch marks on her arms," she explained.

As Kit spoke, Evan flipped through one of the journals. "Here it is." She said and turned the book so they could read the page. "It's a Fierka, a lower level fire demon. Nana went after it just before she died. That's how she got the burns on her arms."

"Demons can be very territorial," John said, looking at the first journal that Sam had looked through. "They don't normally share quarters."

"There must be something about that house that's drawing them," Sam said as he typed on the laptop. "But I can't find anything. No reports from any of the subsequent owners. No reports of any deaths in the house since your grandmother owned it. Nothing."

"Maybe we're looking for the wrong thing," Kit said dejectedly, flipping through the journal she had grabbed.

"I think maybe we are," Evan said a few minutes later. She frowned as she looked at the page before her. Grabbing the journal she had looked at before, her frown deepened. "John, on the page for the Umbra demon, is there any printing in the corner of it?" She asked him and looked up at him.

John flipped back to the page Sam had found and scanned it quicky. "Yeah, there is. The letters K L and D."

"That's shorthand for "killed"," Evan said and tossed the book down onto the table. When JD raised his head and looked at her with sleepy eyes, she pressed her lips to his forehead and gently laid his head back down over her heart. She then said softly to them, "She's already killed these things."

"Then how can they be back?" Kit questioned. "And how can we kill something that's already been destroyed?"

"I don't know," Evan said with a sigh and laid her head back. "But I want back in that house to take a look. See if there's anything else we'll be dealing with. You have the camera with night vision, don't you Sam?"

"Yeah, that would work. It's in the trunk of the Impala," Sam nodded, already thinking about charging the battery for the video camera.

A short time later Edgar came up into the attic. "Find anything?"

"Yeah," Sam replied as he shut his computer down. "And not a lot of it good."

"Your mother sent me up to tell you to get ready for dinner. Apparently we're having company," he warned them.

Evan, Kit and Sam groaned. John looked at them with a puzzled frown. "What's wrong with company?"

"It means that we have to dress up and play nice," Kit said, grinning at her father.

"Monkey suits and food you can't pronounce Dad," Sam explained to John.

"Dad, Kevin's not company anymore, he's family," Evan said wearily.

"It's not Kevin and Angela. So you're going to have to do something about that bruise, Evangeline."

Evan pulled a face. "Like what?" she asked him.

"Cover it up with make up or something," he replied.

"Who's coming over Dad?" Kit shook her head at the exchange between her sister and father.

"A friend of your mothers. You remember Nancy Donovan?" He asked them.

Kit and Evan looked at each other and then looked at John. They knew their mother. "Take our word for it John," Kit began.

"Run. Run fast, run far," Evan finished. "She's newly divorced."

Sam looked at his father. "Dad, run."

i Chapter Seven /i 

Just before their mothers friend arrived, Kit and Evan had been stopped in their tracks when John entered the dining room. Gone were the battered jeans, boots and flannel shirt. In their place was one of their father's suits that, although a little loose, hung smartly on his leaner frame. He had trimmed his hair and beard and styled it just enough that it hung rakishly over his forehead.

"Wow," Kit said to him, taking in the sight before her. "I see where Sam and Dean get their looks."

"You clean up good," Evan commented.

"Girls!" Victoria gasped then nudged her daughters into the kitchen. "You look very handsome, John."

Sam came into the kitchen and looked at Kit, "Is she seriously trying to set up my father?"

"Yes," Kit and Evan answered together. Kit paused, looking at her husband. "Would you be upset if your father started seeing someone?"

Sam stopped and thought about it for a moment. From the time he could walk, the three of them had been focused on hunting the demon that had taken Mary. Until Stanford, Sam had never had a girlfriend because they'd always been hunting. Dean had been, well, Dean, and had taken his comfort where and when he'd wanted. But their father? He had never thought about his father needing the companionship of a woman. His focus had been on avenging Mary. Was it time for Dad to move on? "I don't know," he told Kit honestly.

"They may hate each other on sight like Dean and I did," Evan interjected with a smart grin. 

"I don't think that was hate, Sis," Kit said, setting one of the dishes her mother had prepared and set it in a warming tray.

Nancy Donovan arrived a half an hour later and spent the next hour monopolizing John's time. She sat next to him on the loveseat and battered him with a barrage of questions. Sam, Kit and Evan fought to keep a straight face. Having gotten to know John, they saw the slightly ruffled way he glanced at them, all the while keeping a calm demeanor while facing the pushy woman.

At the dinner table, Nancy sat next to John and kept up the chatter. She sipped her wine and looked at him. "Victoria told me that you have two sons. Sam," she nodded towards the young man at the table. "And Dean?"

John paused and wiped his mouth, glancing at Victoria, wondering what she had said about his eldest. At Victoria's slight shake of her head, he looked back at Nancy. "Dean is my oldest. He's out of town drumming up some business for the shop," John told her idly, years of experience helping the lie come out easier.

"You own your own business?" Nancy questioned him, her eyes sparkling avidly at the knowledge. 

"I have been helping John get everything set up," Edgar told her. "It's quite an interesting plan he has," he continued but stopped when he saw that Nancy was clearly not listening.

"What kind of business?" She asked John, seeming to ignore Edgar's intrusion.

"A classic car restoration shop," John told her.

"I saw the two cars in the driveway. Are they yours?" Nancy leaned closer to John.

"The Impala is his. The T-Birds mine," Evan answered instead, then glanced at Kit and Sam when Nancy ignored her.

"Did you do all the work yourself?" Nancy asked John.

"Dean and I worked on it," John replied, shifting in his chair a little.

Nancy looked at Sam and asked him, "Don't you help your father?"

"I'm in school right now," Sam answered her. "And between school and the baby, unfortunately there isn't a lot of time to help out."

"Oh yes, I remember Victoria saying that you were attending Stanford Law. That is quite a feat getting in there. My daughter, Denise, was going to go to Stanford, but she decided on Berkeley instead," Nancy said to Sam, her voice turning sweet as she spoke.

"Yes it is. I should be able to take the bar exam in the next couple of years," he added idly before taking a bite of roast.

"It must get so busy around here with the baby, a new wife and studying. But I guess with Evan here to help with the baby it makes it a little easier," Nancy sent Evan a smile that while trying to be kind came across as condescending. "I guess there you're the only daughter left to get married, dear."

Evan returned the woman's smile, but was quickly growing weary of her. "As it happens Nancy, I'm engaged to Dean."

"Oh that is wonderful news!" Nancy exclaimed.

"Yes it is," Evan replied and then stopped when she heard a small cry from the baby monitor on the side buffet. Turning in her chair, she listened and when the monitor sounded again she said, "That's JD. I'll be right back."

Nancy turned to Sam and Kit. "I thought your son's name was James?"

"JD is my son," Evan clarified. "Mine and Dean's."

"You have a son also?" Nancy questioned.

"Yes, we do." Evan looked at her parents and saw her mother flush. She hadn't told Nancy about her eldest grandson. Victoria looked at her with imploring eyes, but Evan just shook her head.

"But you aren't married," Nancy said, a strange tone creeping into her voice.

"No, we're not. Not yet," Evan answered. "Problem with that?"

Nancy took a sip of her wine and turned away from Evan, effectively dismissing her. "I would think that you would want to bring your son up in a stable household."

"Dean and I are giving JD a stable household," Evan retorted. "He's got two parents that love him very much. That's all that matters." When she heard JD cry a little louder, she dismissed the woman and walked out of the living room.

Taking the stairs two at a time, she went into the nursery. She gave Jimmy a quick check and found him still asleep before going over to where JD stood at the side of his crib. "What's wrong, Bud?" Evan asked him before lifting him out of the crib. "Ooph, someone's wet." She smiled at JD as he grabbed at the pendant around her neck and held it in his curled up fist as he looked up at her with eyes so like her own. She gently tugged it from his fingers as she laid him down on the changing table and set about tugging his sleeper off.

Kit walked into the nursery and went over to the monitor and switched it off, giving them some privacy from ears downstairs. "Sis? Are you okay?"

"Mom didn't even say anything about JD," Evan tried to keep the tremor out of her voice. "It's like she's ashamed of him."

"That's not true," Victoria said from the doorway. "I didn't say anything because then there would be questions. Questions about where Dean is that I, quite honestly, wouldn't know how to answer."

"Don't bother Mom, I know how you feel about it. You've made it clear already," Evan replied as she continued to change JD. She stopped suddenly and turned around to face her mother. Kit moved in and finished. "Mom, it's a piece of paper, that's it. Why is it so bloody important for everyone that we have that?"

"Honey, it's more than that," Victoria said softly.

"No, it's not. What's most important is that Dean and I are together and we love that little boy more than anything."

"I'm not saying that you don't love JD. Honey, I'm from the old school. You get married and then have the children, that's the way it's always been done," Victoria said. "I know it's horribly old fashioned, but that's how I was raised. Your grandmother was the same way."

"Then why didn't you mention JD to Nancy?" Evan countered.

"Like I said, I didn't know how to answer any questions about where Dean is right now. I'm no good at lying. Besides, don't let Nancy upset you. The reason her daughter didn't go to Stanford? She was getting married because she was six months pregnant and Berkeley offered her married student housing."

"She's a hypocrite," Kit commented as she lifted JD from the table and gave him to his mother.

"Yes, she is," Victoria sighed.

"What were you thinking siccing a barracuda like her on poor John?" Evan asked her mother as they walked out of the nursery.

"I don't know," her mother replied with a shake of her head. "Okay, so my matchmaking was a little off on this one. I haven't had anyone to try and match up in a while. I'm a little rusty."

As soon as they walked in, JD turned his attention to his Grampa John and began squirming in Evan's arms. She smiled and passed him to John, who took him and set him on his knee. Evan sat back down at her spot and watched fondly as John deftly took the fork from JD's hand before he poked someone with it and fed him small bites off of his plate.

Since the demon had been killed, John had become a different man. He was still focused on hunting evil, once a hunter, always a hunter, but he had taken the time to reconnect with his sons. And as a result, Jimmy and JD had their grandpa wrapped around their chubby little fingers.

Although the rest of the evening passed by quickly, it didn't go quickly enough as far as Evan was concerned. Sam and Kit had helped John maneuver his way away from Nancy, and Edgar and Victoria had been able to take control of most of the conversation. Evan had simply ignored the woman and played with JD.

A few hours later, Nancy decided to finally take her leave and once she was out the door, Victoria looked at John and apologized. "I didn't think she would be like that."

"Hey Dad, would you rather deal with a vampire, or with Nancy again?" Sam questioned with a laugh.

"Samuel!" Victoria cried, but couldn't help but laugh. "Probably a vampire."

"Mother!" Kit laughed.

"Vampire, defiantly," John retorted dryly.

"Well, we should get to bed," Kit said a few minutes later. "We have to go back to the house tomorrow morning."

"Remind me to pack a parka if we're going back," Evan grumbled.

"What did you find out?" Victoria asked them, having gotten over her upset of before.

"That the house is pretty crowded. We found at least three different manifestations in there," Kit told her mother.

"And we also found out that Nana killed them all before she died," Evan continued.

"So what do you do now?" Edgar questioned them.

"We don't know. Yet," Sam answered.

"What about my mother? Is her spirit truly still in there?" Victoria inquired, not sure if she really wanted an answer.

"I don't know Mom. We have to go back tomorrow. We'll find out," Kit said softly as she looked at her mother with sad eyes.

"I though we were going to see Dean tomorrow," John said to Evan.

"We are. I'll meet you at the jail tomorrow afternoon," she assured him.

"If you're not there, I'm going in without you," he warned her.

Evan rose from the floor and shifted a sleeping JD in her arms. Walking over to John she bent over and dropped a kiss on the top of his shaggy head. "I will meet you there. I promise."

i Chapter Eight /i 

Early the next morning Evan rose and went into the nursery. She looked over the crib at Jimmy who was happily chewing on one of his toys. Smiling down at the baby, she picked him up and set him in the carrier before going over to the crib where JD stood at the railing waiting for her.

"Good morning, my little man," she cooed at him as she lifted him from the crib. Tucking him on her hip, she picked up the carrier and went downstairs. She put JD in his highchair and made his favorite breakfast of toast and peanut butter before turning on the coffee maker and heating up the formula for Jimmy. It had become a routine for them. Whomever woke up first got breakfast ready for the boys. Usually it was Kit that rose early, but Evan found that since Dean had been in jail, she had been waking up earlier and earlier.

"It's coming, it's coming," she laughed at Jimmy when she heard him begin his usual "I'm hungry, feed me now," whimpers. She pulled the warming bottle from the pan of hot water and tested it. Spreading a thin layer of peanut butter on the cooling toast, she cut it into triangles and set it down on the tray of JD's chair. He grabbed at the toast and shoved a piece into his mouth, chewing happily even as he smushed the toast in his fingers. She filled a sippy cup of juice for him and set it down for him before running her hand over his head and leaning down to kiss the top of his head.

Pouring herself a cup of coffee, she sat down at the table and pulled her chair closer to JD while she held the bottle for Jimmy, who grabbed at it and began sucking it hungrily.

She shook her head when JD grinned at her from a peanut butter covered face. "You my boy, are a mess."

"He reminds me of you at that age," Edgar said as he came into the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee.

"I was never that messy," she rebuked with a laugh.

"You had peanut butter from ear to ear," he countered.

Evan looked at JD. "Your grandpa's losing it," she told the child who giggled happily and then went back to munching his toast.

"Your mother is going to take the boys shopping today while you're at the house," Edgar told her, sitting down at the table with his newspaper. "I have to go into the office to do up some final paperwork for John. He's going to come to the bank this afternoon and sign the papers before he meets you at the jail."

"I appreciate everything you've done Dad," Evan said quietly. "Helping John get everything set up. I know you used your influence at the bank to push things through faster so that it would help Dean."

"The more strongly Dean is tied to this family and this community, the more likely we'll be able to get the decision on bail reversed," Edgar reminded her.

"I know. But you didn't have to do everything that you've done. Thank you," Evan smiled at her father.

"Believe it or not Honey, I like Dean. I want him home to be with you and JD too," Edgar told his daughter.

Evan leaned over and kissed her father's cheek softly. "Thanks Dad."

"Morning," Kit yawned as she came into the kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee. She moved over to the table and took the bottle from Evan and pulled up a chair to sit in front of Jimmy. "Thanks Sis."

"No problem," Evan replied. "Mom's kidnaping the boys for us today."

"She's going to spoil them." Kit said with a laugh.

"So what about your grandmother's house?" Edgar said to his daughters.

"I don't know what we're going to do," Evan said looking into her coffee cup.

"Sam's up in the attic with John looking for something," Kit said as she sipped her coffee. She set Jimmy's empty bottle down and then scooped him up and laid him over her shoulder, gently patting his back.

Once Jimmy and JD were finished with their breakfast, Evan and Kit took them upstairs. Kit gave them both a quick bath while Evan laid out fresh clothes for them. By the time that their mother came downstairs, they had the boys dressed and ready for their outing for Grandma.

Victoria stopped long enough for a half a cup of coffee before she and Edgar collected the boys and took them out to the SUV. They strapped them in and then drove away, bound for the bank to drop Edgar off before Victoria took the boys off on their grand shopping adventure.

"You know, we really need to remind Mom of all the times that she said she was not going to be the kind of grandmother who was going to spoil our kids," Kit said to Evan as they watched the SUV disappear up the street.

"Oh hell, face it Sis, she only had _us_ so we could have kids _for_ her to spoil," Evan retorted.

"You could be right on that one," Kit replied between chuckles.

"Where are the boys?" Sam questioned them a short time later when he and John came down from the attic.

"Mom's taken them shopping," Kit answered and sat down on Sam's knee when he sat down on the couch. "Did you find anything?"

"A general exorcism should clear out the house. There's one in my journal that may work," John told them.

"Any idea why they're back in the house in the first place?" Evan questioned.

"No," Sam said sadly. "I'm sorry."

"We better get the stuff for the exorcism and get back to the house," Kit said, rising from Sam's knee.

"Most of the stuff is in the trunk of the Impala," Sam told them as he rose from the couch.

Never so unenthusiastic by the prospect of banishing evil, Evan sighed softly. "Let's get it done."

"Meet me at the jail at one thirty," John began.

"I will, don't worry, " Evan called as she headed towards the front door with Sam and Kit following close behind her.

i Chapter Nine /i 

Sam pulled the car up outside the house and killed the engine. He and Kit looked across the manicured lawn at it, looking for all the world like a nice, normal suburban home. Evan pulled the T-Bird up behind them and parked.

They pushed open the doors and went to the back of the car and popped the trunk. Sam began rifling through the trunk as Evan climbed out of her car and came over to them. She leaned against the side of the car and looked over the house.

"We're back," she intoned softly to the house.

"It's a house, Sis," Kit remarked.

"I'm talking to the things inside," Evan retorted before turning and looking in the trunk. She reached for the innocent looking case that contained a shot gun. This time, they were going in prepared.

Sam hoisted a duffel bag out of the trunk then shut it and the three of them walked across the street and up the driveway. Making their way around to the back of the house, they paused on the veranda at the back door. Kit waited while Sam and Evan removed the shotguns from their cases and began loading them with rounds made of rock salt. When they were ready and Kit took one of the EMF readers from the duffel bag and switched it on and tucked it into her pocket before unlocking the door. She then stepped back as Sam and then Evan stepped into the kitchen, guns raised, senses alert. Kit followed behind them with her own shot gun raised.

"Should we start here or upstairs?" Evan questioned.

"Let's try in a somewhat neutral spot like the living room," Sam replied and they moved through the kitchen and up the hall to the living room, all the while keeping their ears open for any activity on the EMF reader. It remained silent as they walked into the living room.

"Sam, let's try the night vision. See if there's anything here," Kit said to him when nothing registered on the EMF.

"Okay," Sam nodded. "Can you close the curtains?" He asked them as he set the bag down and began digging inside for the video camera equipped with night vision.

Kit and Evan went around the living room and the dining room closing the heavy drapes that covered the large windows. When they came back Evan pulled the large can of salt out of the bag and began making a large circle on the floor. They all stepped into the center, knowing that the barrier it gave would protect them from the spirits in the house.

"This place is going nuts," Sam said a moment later. He tilted the camera so they could see the display. As they watched, small greenish colored orbs flew past the camera lens. Kit looked up at him.

"There's at least fifteen so far," she said, a frown creasing her brow.

"You think that ritual in your father's journal is going to be enough to clear them all?" Evan asked with a slight touch of worry in her voice.

When the orbs on the screen started flying towards them and bouncing off of the protective barrier of the salt ring, Sam looked at the girls. "I think they're getting pissed."

"You think they know why we're here?" Kit asked him with a smirk.

As another orb shot towards them, Evan flinched back from the camera despite knowing that it couldn't get to her. "I think so."

"Look at that one," Sam pointed to a small spot on the screen. There was one small little orb hovering right in front of the camera lens. While the other orbs began whirling furiously around them, attacking the barrier, it remained still.

"Why's it just floating there?" Evan asked him.

"I don't know," Kit replied. She reached out towards the orb, her fingers passing the barrier.

"Sis, don't," Evan said quickly, reaching for Kit's hand to stop her.

"It's coming towards your hand, Kit," Sam said as he watched the orb begin to move. The other orbs, he noticed, began to fly towards her outstretched fingers, but he noticed that the small one began to fly at the others, seeming to drive them back. "Look at that," Sam whispered to Evan. He tipped the display so she could see.

"Oh my god," she breathed. "Kit, it's driving the others away from you."

Kit held herself still. She gasped slightly when she felt a warmth touch her fingers and then envelope her hand. "I feel something. What's it doing?" she asked softly.

Sam whispered back. "It's circling around your hand." He paused and watched as the orb began to move slowly up her arm. Glancing at his wife, he noticed that she had closed her eyes and a small tear ran down her cheek. "Kit, what's wrong?" He asked urgently.

Kit closed her eyes tighter and tried to stifle the sob that clawed suddenly at her chest. She shook her head, wanting to tell Sam that she was okay, but she was too overwhelmed.

Evan moved to her sister's side, ready to grab her shoulders and pull her hand back into the circle. Kit waved her hands away and turned to smile at her sister. "It won't hurt me." For a moment she just wanted to savor the warm feeling of love that filled her. She breathed slowly and then whispered to Evan. "Do you smell that?"

Evan breathed slowly, but didn't notice anything. "No, I don't. What do you smell."

"Hold your hand out," Kit instructed her and Evan frowned at her. "Trust me."

Reaching her hand out slowly, Evan felt something sting her hand and she pulled it back with hiss. At the look on Kit's face, she tried again, pushing her hand through the protective barrier. She felt the sting again, but it was gone as soon as it started.

"It's moving over to you Evan," Sam told her.

A puzzled look came over Evan's face as she stood there. A tingling warmth spread up her arm and she was rocked by a feeling of protection and love. She shivered slightly and that was when she noticed it. The soft scent of sulphur. And lavender. "That smells like," she began and looked at Kit in surprise.

"Nana. It's her, Evan. She is here," Kit said softly.

Evan took a deep breath, taking in the familiar scent that now surrounded them. Catherine Rennie had always smelled like a field of lavender, but they had always detected the underlying scent of sulphur that clung to her after so many battles with demons. She clenched her eyes tightly and tried to stop the sting of tears.

"God Nana, what are you doing here?" Kit asked aloud. She gave an irritated sigh. "I wish there was a way to talk to her."

"We'd need something like a Ouija board or something," Sam commented, still watching the camera screen and the small orb that floated between Kit and Evan's outstretched hands.

Looking at her sister and Sam, Evan bit her lip. Pulling her hand back, she pushed one long sleeve up and looked down at her scars self-consciously. Glancing out the corner of her eye at them, then back down at her arm. She took a deep breath. The last time a spirit had invaded her body, it had brought with it a demon hell bent on crossing over to the human plane and ended up with her being dead. Albeit temporarily.

But this was their grandmother. And they needed answers. She had to trust in her.

Evan looked at Kit and Sam. "How about a living Ouija board?" she said before pushing up the sleeves of her shirt and stepping out of the circle.

"Evan, get back in here!" Kit cried, reaching out to grab Evan's shirt, but missing.

"Evan!" Sam hissed at her.

"Nana," Evan began nervously. "We need to talk to you. Come to me."

Taking another step into the living room she stopped suddenly when an invisible force struck her abdomen and pushed against her. She sucked in a startled breath and fleetingly regretted her decision as she sunk to her knees and tipped her head back. She struggled to take another breath and there was a slight pain as the force seemed to sink into her. Fear streaked through her, but disappeared moments later when she was surrounded by warmth and the scent of lavender. Her head began to swim and she swayed on her feet.

"Evan!" Kit screamed and stepped over the salt ring. Grabbing her sister's shoulder she dragged her back towards the circle. "Sam!"

Sam grabbed the can of salt and fixed the circle while Kit turned Evan around. "What the hell were you thinking?" He demanded, anger and concern running through him.

"I am seriously going to kick your ass," Kit muttered at her sister.

"Katarina, watch your language. Ladies speak better than that," came a soft voice from her sister's mouth. But it was so unlike Evan's that Kit stepped back in surprise and looked at her sister. Evan opened her eyes slowly and straightened. "Your sister always was too impulsive for her own good."

"Um, okay," Sam looked between the two women feeling a little ill at ease. "Kit, no offense, but I think this was a bad idea." He lowered his voice. "With those marks on Evan's arms, we may not be able to force her out of your sister."

"You won't need to," Catherine Rennie said, and turned a soft smile on Sam. "I, unlike the spirit that took over her before, don't want to hurt her."

"You know what happened to her before?" Kit asked, not wanting to acknowledge how strange it was to be talking to her dead grandmother through her sister.

Evan's head nodded and a smile, so like her sisters', yet reminiscent of her grandmother's crossed her face. The spirit moved slowly, as if trying to get used to being inside of a body again. She slowly turned her head and smiled at Sam. "Samuel," she said softly.

"This is weird," Sam admitted, looking at the figure that was once Evan. Or still was. He gave his head a confused shake.

"Tell me about it," the Catherine/Evan entity said with a fond smile.

"Nana, what are you doing here? We followed your wishes. We cremated you so you could rest in piece," Kit said to her.

"I know, Sweetheart, but I couldn't," Catherine said.

"I don't understand," Kit said softly, confusion coloring her words.

"When the end came, I hoped you and your sisters would eventually find my journals and books in the attic. At the very least, I thought the knowledge in them would help you stay safe, but it was an old woman's foolish dream that you would follow in my footsteps."

"Well, they did," Sam said with a chuckle. "Except Angie."

"I suspected as much, she has too much of her mother and father in her," Catherine smiled fondly.

"That doesn't explain why you're here though," Kit interjected.

"I buried a gris-gris with pieces of my hair and nails in the basement," Catherine told her.

Sam looked at Kit. "Human remains. It kept your grandmother's spirit tied to the house."

"He's a smart one. I'd keep hold of him," Catherine said to her granddaughter.

"I plan on it," Kit replied. "Why would you tie yourself to the house?"

"I had hoped that when I passed away, your parents might come back here to live so that you and your sisters would have a place to learn and train. But when I died, the demons that I sent back to Hell latched onto my spirit and followed me here. The wards that I put on the house to keep it safe from harm ended up trapping me and all of the others here."

"The others, are they the ones that terrorized the Talberts?" Sam asked her.

"Yes. Were I still alive, I could stop them, but like this... They're more powerful than I am," Catherine told them urgently. She reached out and touched her granddaughter's cheek. "You must find a way. I never meant for this to happen. I only wanted you to have a safe place."

"Why have they just started to manifest now?" Kit asked her.

"They've tried before, but they weren't as powerful as they are now. Something's coming, Katarina. Something strong. And they're feeding off of its energy. You must be careful. All of you."

"Nana," Kit said then stopped. There was so much that she wished she could say to her grandmother.

"I miss you too, Katarina," Catherine said softly and then tipped Kit's head up. "You and your sisters were my life."

"I was so angry with you when you died. Angry that you kept all of this a secret from us," Kit admitted, then wiped away the tears that started to run down her cheeks. "Why did you?" 

"I know you were. I wanted to tell you so many times about all of this, but I promised your parents I would wait until you were old enough to decide for yourselves. You each had to make your own choice. I knew you were strong girls and wouldn't take the easy life."

"Much to Mom and Dad's horror," Kit grinned.

Turning to Sam, Catherine said to him. "You and your brother take care of my girls."

Sam gave her a startled look. "How did you know about Dean?"

She tapped Evan's forehead and Sam nodded in understanding. She then turned to Kit. "Your mother must be having fits that they're not married."

"Oh, that's a sore spot with Evan," Kit said to her with another grin. She then sobered. "You know what we have to do, don't you?"

Catherine nodded. "You have to exorcize the house of all the spirits, myself included. It must be soon, Katarina. The others are growing more powerful with every moment. They will break through the wards soon and get out of the house and then who knows what they will do."

"They'll inflict their pain and misery on the unsuspecting souls who cross their paths," Sam muttered.

"I'm afraid you're right," Catherine said to Sam.

"Sam's father, John, has this exorcism in his journal. Do you think this will be strong enough?" Kit handed her the journal, opened to the page that showed the intricate ritual.

Taking the journal Catherine looked over it. "Yes. This will work," she said before handing the journal back. She gave her granddaughter one last fond smile. "I must go now."

"No, Nana, wait," Kit cried not wanting to let go of her grandmother's spirit just yet.

"Darling, I can't stay. The longer I stay, the weaker Evangeline grows," Catherine said softly and then reached out to cup her granddaughters cheek before pressing a soft kiss to her forehead. "I will always be with you." Catherine gave Kit a hug before she stepped out of the protective circle of salt. Once she had cleared it, Catherine's entity easily slid out of her eldest granddaughter, but hovered close by.

Evan's eyes slid shut and her knees crumbled from beneath her. "Sam!" Kit cried, and Sam took a quick step towards Evan and caught her in his arms. Kit grabbed her sister's feet and they brought her back into the protective circle and carefully laid her down.

"Hosting your grandmother must have used up an awful lot of her strength," he said to Kit, kneeling at Evan's side while Kit shrugged out of her jacket, folded it up and laid it under Evan's head.

Kit pressed the back of her hand to her sisters pale face and felt a chill from her skin. She looked at Sam worriedly and then back down at her sister. "She probably just needs to rest for a little bit."

"Do you think she remembers anything your grandmother said?" Sam asked his wife.

"I don't know. When Stacy possessed her, she didn't. Yet she could talk to Stacy in the beginning. When the demon grew stronger and took over, Evan couldn't remember anything."

"We should get her out of here," Sam told her. "But I don't want to take her out of this circle in this state. She might still be open to possession."

"I'm still going to kick her ass," Kit muttered and then looked up when Sam chuckled. He pointed to the camera screen and they could see the solitary orb moving from side to side in front of the circle.

"Language, Katarina," Sam said with a grin.

"Sorry, Nana," Kit said aloud and then smiled.

Kneeling beside Evan's prone form, Kit glanced worriedly at her pale face every once in a while they talked quietly. Sam would check the screen on the video camera every once in a while and found that the orb was still floating in front of them. When Evan groaned softly, the both breathed a sigh of relief.

"Okay, that wasn't the most brilliant idea I've ever had," Evan said slowly as her eyes fluttered open. She sat up slowly, wincing and letting out a soft groan as she did.

"Are you okay?" Kit asked her sister, worry evident in her voice.

"I feel like I've been hit by a Mack truck," Evan replied, rubbing her temple.

"Please don't joke about that," Sam said quietly to her.

Evan looked at Sam uneasily. "Sorry Sam." It had been over nine months since they had been nearly killed when the Demon that had killed their mother had possessed the driver of a Mack truck and slammed it into the side of Dean's car, but the aftereffects were still with all of them. Turning to Kit she asked her, "Did you find out anything from Nana?"

"Yeah, we did. Do you remember anything she said?" Kit questioned her.

Evan shook her head slowly. "Nope, I was definitely on the sidelines on that one. What'd I miss?"

As Kit told her what their grandmother had told her and Sam, Evan stared at her in disbelief. She then looked out to where she knew the orb was floating close by. "Of all the stupid things" she trailed off. "What were you thinking?"

"I could ask the same of you," Kit said, and then gave her sister a smack on the arm. "Don't you ever put yourself in that position again. What if it hadn't been able to get out of you?"

"I had to have a little faith, Kit," Evan gave her a weak smile. "So, what do we do now?"

"We exorcize the house with the ritual in Dad's journal," Sam said, holding it up.

"I mean about Nana," Evan said to him, and then looked at Kit.

"We have to exorcize her spirit too. Sis," Kit told her logically.

"But Kit," Evan began. "It's Nana. We can't do that to her."

"We have to," Kit replied. "I don't want to do it anymore than you do, but we told the Talberts that we would take care of this for them. We have to clear the house."

"We will. But we can dig up the gris-gris first and take it back to Mom and Dad's with us," Evan knew she was grasping at straws.

"Sis, she needs to rest in peace," Kit replied. "She's earned it, hasn't she?" Evan looked away, biting the inside of her lip to stifle the tears that threatened. This wasn't just any spirit they were talking about. It was their grandmother. "Evan?" Kit said softly, putting her hand on her sister's shoulder.

"Evan, you know what has to be done," Sam said to her quietly.

Hanging her head, Evan sighed. "I know."

They jumped slightly when Sam's cell phone broke the silence. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled it out and flipped it open. "It's Dad."

Evan hissed as she looked at her watch. Visiting hours with Dean began in less than half an hour, and she had promised John she would meet him at the jailhouse. "Tell him I'm on my way," she said quickly. Pushing herself to her feet she swayed slightly and reached out for Kit's shoulder to steady herself.

"Hey Dad. Evan's on her way," he told the man. "No, nothing's wrong. She's just a little late leaving."

"Are you going to be okay?" Kit asked her sister worriedly when she saw how pale she still was.

"I'll be fine," Evan assured her. She shook her head to push away the dizziness. The possession, although brief, had drained a lot of her energy. "Promise me you won't do anything until I get back."

"Evan, we should do this as soon as possible. If we wait too long, it will be even harder," Kit told her.

"I know. But promise me," Evan said urgently, staring at her sister.

Kit sighed. "I promise."

"Good. I'll meet you guys back at the house," Evan said as she turned to Sam and flashed her fingers at him. She then turned and darted out of the house, digging in her jeans pocket as she jogged down the driveway.

"Yeah Dad,' Sam said from inside the house. "She'll be there in twenty minutes." He chatted with him for another few minutes and then hung up.

"So do we go ahead?" Sam asked Kit, not wanting to push her, knowing that the thought of exorcizing their own grandmother was going to be difficult for them to contemplate.

"No. Not yet," Kit turned to him. "I promised Evan we wouldn't do this without her. And as much as she doesn't want to do it, she would be more upset if we went ahead and did it without her."

Sam nodded. "When she gets back from seeing Dean, we'll go over the ritual and figure out how we're going to do this."

Kit reached down and picked up her jacket from the floor. Sam held up the video camera and looked at the screen and found the small orb still floating nearby. They turned to leave the house, but Kit stopped and held out her hand. She smiled when she felt a warmth creep along the skin of her arm and then brush over her cheek.

"We'll be back Nana," she said softly, then left the house and drove back to Edgar and Victoria's, lost in their own thoughts.

i Chapter Ten /i 

Evan pulled the Thunderbird up beside John's large, customized 4x4 and parked. She had barely cut the engine when John climbed out.

"You must have broken every speed limit on the way here," he said lightly, glancing at his watch. She'd made it with five minutes to spare.

"Just about," she replied through the open window. Pushing open the car door, she climbed out and slammed the door shut. She swayed on her feet and grabbed for the side of the car. John rushed around the car and took hold of her shoulder.

"What's wrong?" He asked her quickly, tipping her head up and inspecting her pale, sweat-dotted face.

"I'm okay," she assured him quickly and gave him a weak smile.

"You look like you're going to either pass out or throw up," he countered. He gently pushed her shoulders and made her lean against the side of the car while she took a deep breath.

"I had a brilliant idea that wasn't so brilliant," she told him, and then at his questioning look, she said, "Don't worry, I'll be fine."

"You sure?" John questioned her, still looking at her with a worried frown.

"I'm sure. Let's go see Dean," she replied and walked past him.

They walked into the jailhouse and through the security station where they had to turn over all personal items. They were then escorted into the visiting room, and waited while they went to get Dean from his cell. Not too long afterwards, the door opened and Dean stood there in his orange jumper, his hands and ankles cuffed. He waited while they undid the cuffs and then turned to give the guard a dark look when he was shoved into the room. He came over to the empty viewing booth and sat down.

Evan nudged John towards the visiting chair. Normally she would have gone first, but she wanted to compose herself a little more before she faced the barrage of questions she knew Dean would throw at her.

Dean looked up at Evan and frowned when he noted the bandage on her forehead and the split lip she sported. But when his Dad sat down before him, he pushed aside the frown, knowing that he would get answers from her soon enough. Turning to look at his father, he picked up the phone.

"Hey Dad," he said, trying not to let his father see his relief. In the eight weeks that he had been incarcerated, his father had only come to see him twice now.

"Hey Dean," John said gruffly. His son had lost weight, and his face, normally so tanned and flushed with the thrill of a hunt, was pale. The bruises around his eye and jaw were beginning to fade. "How are you holding up?"

"Gotta tell ya, I'm getting restless in here," Dean admitted. Almost all of his life had been spent on the road. He'd gotten used to sleeping in either a moving car or a crappy hotel room. Hell, over the past year and a half, he had actually gotten used to the sounds of the Callum house. But here, the sounds of the guards making their rounds at night and the other inmates were grating on his nerves.

"We're working on getting you out," John told his eldest son.

"I know," Dean said. He looked up at his father, not wanting to ask, but curious as to why the man hadn't come to see him much.

Seeing the look in his son's eye, and knowing him as well as he did, John gave him a fond smile. "Edgar's been helping me set up a new business. I'm opening a custom car shop."

Dean looked stunned. He'd known that in another life, John and a partner had owned a mechanic shop in Lawrence, Kansas. He'd just never thought about his father settling down before. "What?"

"We should be opening soon. I just finalized the purchase today. Your lawyer and I are going to take them to the judge tomorrow. We thought that maybe if the judge saw that you are going to be gainfully employed in the area, they might at least let you out on bail until the trial."

Dean couldn't speak, but his expression clearly showed his surprise at the lengths his father had gone to for his eldest son.

"I did it for all of us, Dean," John said. "The-" he paused. He knew that prisoner conversations were often monitored and he didn't want anything getting back to the DA that might hurt his son's chances of getting out. "I meant what I said before, Dean. I want so much for my boys. I can't bring your mother back, but the past is past, Dean. We have to start looking at our futures."

"You mean we're giving up," Dean trailed off and looked at his father.

John shook his head. "No. We're not giving that up, but you and your brother have families to consider now. They need you. Sam's gone back to school. You need something else too, Dean. I want you to help me with the shop."

"A normal life," Dean said slowly, looking over his shoulder at Evan standing just out of earshot, giving him and his father some privacy. "Well, as normal as the Winchesters can have."

"Don't worry son, we're going to get you out of here," John assured him.

"I know, Dad," Dean said.

"You hang in there," John ordered him softly and then smiled. "I think Evan's getting antsy."

Dean smiled crookedly. His smile faded when his father rose from the chair and Evan slid into it.

"Hey," she said, a weak smile on her face.

"What the hell happened to your head?" he demanded with a frown.

"Hello to you too," she groused.

"Don't give me that. What happened?"

"A bannister bit me," she retorted.

Dean's frown deepened. "A bannister bit you," he repeated, then pinned her with a stare.

Evan shifted uncomfortably under the intense green gaze. "It's nothing," she assured him.

Dean sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest, staring her down. Evan stared back at him. She shifted again. "Alright," she growled. "Kit got a call from Father K. He had a job for us."

His frown deepened. "And you guys just jumped on a job without me?"

"Dean it's a simple," she paused. "Spring cleaning. We're just clearing out a few pests."

"Then he could have called anyone to do it," Dean said.

Evan shook her head. "Not this one. It's at our grandmother's old house. Mom's mom," she said, pointedly.

Dean looked at her. "You okay?" When he'd gone back to his old house in Lawrence and saw the spirit of his mother, his heart had ached. The few good memories he had of that house had come flooding back. He could only imagine that it had been the same for her.

"I'm dealing, not very well," she admitted to him. "But I'm dealing. It's odd though, being back in Nana's old house. It's almost like she's there. Watching over us. Ghosts of the past, and all that." When he sent her a questioning gaze, she nodded.

"Sonofabitch," he muttered. "And the bannister that bit you? Was that," he trailed off, his voice questioning.

"No, just the infestation was a bit more than we thought at first. The three of us took a bit of a tumble on the stairs."

"It's a good thing you have a hard head," he remarked.

"Thanks," she returned with a snark.

"I don't like this," Dean said, curling the phone into his shoulder as he looked at her.

"It's just a little job. Keep us busy," Evan replied.

"Not that," Dean shook his head. "Feels weird hearing everyone's lives moving forward and I'm here, and not going anywhere..." Dean gestured at the drab walls that surrounded him.

Evan's heart caught in her chest. It wasn't very often that Dean let down his personal walls and let any emotion or uncertainty show through. "This job is just to keep me from climbing the walls. We're all doing everything we can to get you out of here. We miss you and want you home."

"I know," he gave her a lopsided smile.

"Although, I think I'll miss having the bed all to myself," she smirked at him and then laughed softly at the dark look he sent her.

"Promise me that you'll be careful," he said to her.

"Always am," she said cockily.

"Evan," he drawled. "I mean it."

She looked at him seriously. "I promise. We're going to clear out the house tomorrow and then it will be done." When he gave her an aggravated sigh, she smiled.

"How's JD?" Dean asked. He had gotten the new picture that Evan had sent him and it had made him miss his son even more.

"He's good. Growing like a fricking weed," she smiled. "And he asks about you all the time."

"I want out of here," Dean growled in irritation. For the longest time, he had wondered if he was ever going to have a family of his own, and now that he did, he couldn't see them.

"I know. Soon, Dean. Becky gave her deposition. It's with the DA in St. Louis and they've sent a copy to the DA here. We're just waiting for the lab results on the DNA tests from your father and Sam. By the trial date, we'll have everything we need to prove that you're you."

"What will happen to the other guy?" He asked her.

"They'll mark him as a John Doe, I guess. Other than that, I don't really care. He was a murderer and a thief and he's screwed up our lives enough. My main concern is getting you home."

Home.

He had wondered if he would ever be able to think of the Callum house as home, but after being away from it for so long, the idea of it being home was appealing to him. Then again, home had always been wherever his family was. Dean up his hand up to the glass and Evan laid hers against it. "Just a little while longer, right?"

Giving him a quick nod, Evan swallowed. God she hated this. Just a thin sheet of plexiglass separated them, but they might as well be on opposite ends of the country. She curled the phone into her shoulder and whispered to him. "I miss you."

Dean closed his eyes and swallowed the lump that suddenly formed in his throat. "Miss you too, babe."

"Time's up, Doe," the guard said to him and Dean nodded slowly.

Evan took a deep breath and tried to push aside the tears, pasting a weak smile on her face. Kissing her fingertips, she touched the glass once again and Dean laid his fingers against them on his side as he rose from his chair. He gave her one last cocky smile and mouthed something at her that made her smile a little brighter.

She waited until he was led out of the visiting area and then rose from her chair and turned and found John waiting for her. As she walked up to him, he put his arm around her shoulder and they walked out of the jailhouse.

"It's almost over," he told her once they had cleared the doors.

"What if they don't believe Becky, John? What if they keep him in there? We both know Dean. He's not going to be able to take being locked up too much longer."

John laid his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. Evan looked up at him and felt a stab of sadness. His face, although roughed from years of fighting and sadness, reminded her so much of Dean's.

"Evan, don't think like that. Dean's coming home," John assured her.

"I hope so. I don't know how much longer I can take this place. I'm really beginning to hate it," she told him honestly. 

"I know. It'll be over soon," John told her.

"The sooner the better," she muttered. She then leaned against the side of the car and folded her arms across her chest.

John paused in turning towards his truck. He cocked his head as he looked at Evan. "For someone who doesn't like this place, you're not moving very fast to get out of here."

Evan sighed and looked down at the scuffed toes of her boots, then peered up at him. "Can I ask your advice on something?"

John looked at the young woman in surprise. In the time that he had known her, she had never asked for his advise. In fact he had thought that she, along with Kit and the rest of her family, thought that he had done wrong by his boys with the way he had raised them. "Sure you can."

Evan gave him a weak smile. "Not here. There's a small coffee shop around the corner. I could do with a cup."

John nodded and headed towards his truck. Evan climbed into the Thunderbird and pulled out of the parking lot, John following close behind her. They pulled up in front of the shop and went inside, finding an empty booth at the back. The tired looking waitress pasted a smile on her face as she came up to their table.

"What can I get for you?" She asked, whipping out her order pad and pulling a pencil out from the bun in her hair.

"Two black coffee's and some toast, please," Evan said and the waitress went to fill the order.

"So what happened at the house this morning?" John questioned a moment later.

Evan sighed. "I had a brilliant idea that wasn't so brilliant," she muttered and then told him what happened.

"That was a damn foolish thing to do Evan," he muttered when she was done, understanding now why she looked like death warmed over. He shook his head as he looked at her. Although he had questioned her skills, and he had to admit, her intelligence when he'd first met her, his son hadn't. Since then though he himself had come to trust in her as much as his son did. But then she went and did something as foolish as letting herself become possessed, again, and he had to wonder.

"I already got the lecture from Kit," she groused. "Just don't ever tell Dean what I did."

"It's a wonder he didn't guess when he looked at you," he stated looking at her.

"He was more concerned with the knock I took on my head," she replied. She paused when the waitress brought two mugs over and poured them each a cup of the strong smelling coffee then told Evan that her toast would be along in a moment.

"Why would you do that to yourself? Especially after what happened last time? What if it had been a demon?"

"I had to believe that it was her. I guess I had to know why Nana was there more than I realized," she told him.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" John asked her, taking a swig of his coffee.

Wrapping her chilled hands around the warmed mug, Evan looked down into the steaming black liquid. "Yeah. She purposely tied herself to the house John. She did it so she could come back and help us."

John sat back in the booth and looked at the young woman before him. "She must have loved you very much."

"She did. And now we're," she stopped as the waitress brought the small plate of toast over to the table. Evan looked at it and although a few minutes before she had thought that it might help with the queasiness in her stomach, she now felt nauseous looking at it. "Now we're talking about exorcizing her."

"And you don't know what to do," he stated.

"No. I don't. I know she's a spirit and she needs to rest in peace. After all the years of hunting that she did, she deserves it." Evan took a deep breath as her voice cracked.

"But to Exorcize her doesn't seem right," he surmised and Evan nodded. "Evan, darlin', I can't tell you what to do. What I can say is that you have to follow your instincts."

Evan gave him a limp smile. "I didn't expect that. I figured you for the "Exorcize 'em all" kind."

"Normally I am. If it's supernatural, destroy it, but when I think of Mary's spirit in our old house protecting the boys," he sighed. "I have to think that not all spirits are here to harm humans."

Evan picked up a piece of toast and began pulling off little pieces of it. She chewed a small piece and then pushed aside the rest of it. "Sometimes this hunting evil sucks," she muttered.

John laughed and they finished their coffee's in silence, then paid their bill and left the coffee shop. Wanting to do some work on the building that was going to house his new shop, John headed off in the other direction and Evan climbed into her car and drove back to the house.

She didn't expect to walk in on world war three.

I Chapter Eleven /i 

"There is no way in hell your exorcizing your grandmother like a common demon!" Victoria Callum shouted at Kit.

"What's going on?" Evan questioned as she walked into the living room and found her mother and sister toe to toe in the middle of the room. Her father and Sam were wisely standing off to the side not interfering, their arms folded over their chests.

"Mom, what else are we going to do? We don't have a ritual that will exclude her and take out the rest of them. They just aren't written that way!" Kit yelled back.

"So write one!" Victoria snapped.

"Mom. Kit," Evan said, stepping over to them. Sam and Edgar each grabbed a shoulder and tugged her back from the fracas. Looking over her shoulder at them, Evan saw them shake their heads.

"Write one," Kit said, her tone turning sarcastic. "Oh sure. And how do you expect me to do that? Exorcisms are written by priests. High ranking priests. Anything I write, the demons and spirts are just going to laugh at us and then pulverize us!"

"There has to be something you can do!"

"Mom, in order to clear the house, we have to hit them all at once or else they are going to take us out," Evan said quietly from the sidelines.

Victoria glared at her eldest daughter. "With all the goddamned rituals you have in this house, there has to be some other way! Find it!" She snapped then walked out of the living room and into the kitchen. They heard her opening and closing cupboards with more force than necessary.

"I think I'll wait here until she calms down a little bit," Edgar said and sat down on the couch.

"Good idea," Sam said and then shrank a little when Kit turned anger filled eyes on him. He held up his hands. "Hey, I didn't start it."

"I gather you told Mom what happened today?" Evan asked them and Sam and Kit nodded.

"Did you tell Dean?" Sam asked her.

"Not everything. He was pissed enough about us taking on this job in the first place. If I'd told him what I did today, he'd would have gone ballistic."

"Are you sure there isn't anything else you can do?" Edgar asked them.

"Short of letting her possess Evan again," Kit said then shook her head.

"And we don't even know if that would work," Sam added. "When we tried the exorcism on the demon that possessed her before it didn't work because the marks on her were its own.There's nothing to say that it will work with your grandmother."

"And there's nothing to say that it won't either," Evan countered.

"Evan, no. Look how weak you were after just that short time this afternoon. Her spirit trying to hold onto you during an exorcism may be too much for your body to take," Sam said, trying to make her see reason.

"Sam, if there's a chance," she began.

"I'm not willing to let you take that chance," Kit cut in.

"Sis, it's my choice," Evan replied.

"No," Edgar broke in. "I don't want you to do anything that will endanger you life. And knowing your grandmother, she wouldn't either." He looked at his eldest daughter and wrapped his arm around her shoulder. "We're not going to risk losing you."

"I guess we can check the books again," Evan said, but without much hope. They had been over the books so many times looking for information that soon they were going to know them verbatim.

Kit and Sam shrugged and followed Evan up the stairs to the attic where they began pouring over the books again. A short time later, Victoria and Edgar brought them up some dinner, and took over the search while Kit and Evan gave Jimmy and JD their nightly baths and put them to bed. When John came home late that night he took a quick shower and joined them.

By morning, they had exhausted the vast journals and rituals and had found nothing. Sam and Edgar and John went downstairs to gather the waking boys and give them breakfast.

"I'm sorry Mom," Kit and Evan said to their mother.

Victoria sighed and put down the book she had been flipping through. "No, girls, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have snapped at you like that. I know if there was another way, you would have done it. I guess I was just feeling guilty."

"Guilty about what, Mom?" Evan asked her.

"About not helping your grandmother more. About getting rid of her house because I was angry at her for dying."

Kit and Evan smiled at their mother. "I know the feeling," Kit said and gave her mother's shoulders a squeeze and kissed her temple. "I was angry when she died too."

"I was more angry that she didn't tell us about all of this sooner," Evan replied.

"That was your father's and my doing," Victoria replied. She then sighed and looked at her daughters. "You girls should get some sleep. You're going to need it tonight."

Kit and Evan looked at each other and nodded. They knew what they had to do, even though they didn't want to. Closing the books that they had been searching through, Kit and Evan pushed themselves wearily off of the couch and made their way down the stairs to their bedrooms.

As Kit walked into her bedroom, she smiled tiredly when she saw Sam stretched out in their bed. She stripped silently and climbed under the covers with him.

"Are you okay?" he asked her as he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to his chest. He pressed a soft kiss to her shoulder blade and then rested his chin on her shoulder. Kit nodded slowly.

"I will be," she replied and then closed her eyes against the sting of tears. She heard Sam's deep, even breathing and was filled with a comfort that she hadn't felt in days. Pulling his arms tighter around her, Kit drifted off into sleep.

Evan walked into her bedroom and closed the door behind her. Stripping out of the jeans and t-shirt that she had been wearing since the day before, she pulled one of Dean's flannel shirts on and buttoned it up. As she pulled her hair free of the collar, she glanced at the marks on her arms.

Sitting down on the edge of her bed, she stared at them. Bits and pieces of that time came back to her. But the times that she couldn't remember, the times she had been out of control of her own body, scared her. Even this afternoon, letting her grandmother take control over her, she had to admit that it scared her despite knowing that her grandmother would never hurt her.

She bit her lip. She could do it. She could protect her grandmother by letting her into her during the exorcism. But then Sam could be right also. They didn't know if the sigils on her arms would keep Nana safe from the exorcism. And it could very well kill her to try.

Scrubbing her hands through her hair, she then laid down on the bed. She closed her eyes and forced the thoughts in her head to still enough for her to fall asleep. She would think about what to do once she had gotten some sleep.

i Chapter Twelve /i 

It seemed that she had just fallen asleep when Kit was nudging her shoulder. She blinked blearily at her sister and groaned. Sitting up in bed, she pushed her hair out of her eyes.

"Mom's got coffee going downstairs," Kit said.

"What time is it?" Evan yawned and rose from the bed.

"It's almost eight o'clock," Kit told her. "JD's been fussing for his Momma."

"I'm going to take a quick shower and be right down," Evan said as she stumbled towards the bathroom.

Kit went downstairs and into the kitchen where her mother was making them all a light dinner. "Evan will be right down," she said, sitting beside Sam who was giving Jimmy his bottle. JD sat in the high chair chewing on pieces of apple that John was passing him. Edgar stood at the counter helping his wife.

"Father K called while you were upstairs," Victoria told her. "He was calling to see how things were going."

"I'll give him a call back tomorrow after we've finished," she told her mother.

"I wished he'd never called you girls about this one," Victoria said honestly.

"I'm glad he did Mom," Kit replied with a small sad smile. "I got to talk to her one more time. And through Evan's memories, she knows that Angie's married, that Evan and I aren't alone in this and she got to see Jimmy and JD. As bad as it may seem, there are some good things that have come out of this."

"I'm inclined to disagree with you," Victoria stated firmly as she went back to fixing dinner.

"How's my little man," Evan said, walking into the kitchen.

JD looked up at her when he heard her voice and started squirming in his chair, his smile widening. "Mamma!"

Picking him up out of the chair, Evan cuddled him close and dropped a kiss on the top of his soft hair. "Have you been behaving for Grandma and Grandpa?" She asked him, but received only a giggle as an answer.

Setting him on her hip, Evan went over to the coffee maker and poured herself a cup of coffee. She scooted the mug away from JD's grasping hands and took a short sip. "No way, Bud. You have any of this and you'll be up all night."

Sitting down at the table, Evan took the bowl of apple slices from in front of John and fed them to JD while she picked at the plate her mother set down for her. She fed him little pieces and cuddled him close.

They chatted idly while they ate dinner and then moved into the living room when Jimmy fell asleep and Kit took him up to the nursery. When JD fell asleep on her lap, Evan took him upstairs and laid him down in his crib. She leaned over and gave him a kiss on his head and stared down at him for a little while longer before going over to Jimmy and adjusting the blanket on him.

Going back downstairs, she found Sam and Kit rooting through the duffel bag on the couch. "How many times are you going to go through that bag?" She asked them.

"We just want to be ready," Kit told her sister.

"We should get going. Get this over with," Sam said.

"Yeah, I guess we should," Evan agreed.

"All of you be careful," John said to them as Sam slung the duffel bag over his shoulder and they walked towards the door. Edgar and Victoria followed him and the three of them paused at the door.

"We will," Evan answered. "We'll be back by morning."

"Girls," Victoria said quickly, then stopped. She didn't know what to say to them. She didn't like what they had to do, but she understood it. "Just be careful." She finished.

Kit and Evan nodded at their mother and then walked down the front steps towards the Thunderbird. Kit tossed the duffel bag in the back and climbed in while Sam slid into the front passenger seat. Evan slammed the car door and cranked over the engine.

Driving over to the house, Sam tucked the flashlight between his head and shoulder and read over the ritual. "When we get to the house, we need to salt all the doors and windows to make sure that nothing escapes," he told them.

"We're going to have to do it fast," Kit said. "As soon as we start doing that, they're going to know what we're up to and try to stop us."

"It's going to take too much time to seal all the doors and windows on both sides of the house," Evan said doubtfully.

"Maybe we can lure them all into one side and then trap them?" Sam asked.

"I think after yesterday they're going to flock to us as soon as we go in the house," Kit replied.

"What, you think they know that they can possess me?" Evan questioned them.

"It's quite possible," Kit answered her sister. "Maybe you should stay out of the house until we get them trapped?"

"To hell with that," Evan retorted. "I'm in this all the way. Did you guys leave the salt ring from yesterday?"

"Yeah, we did," Sam replied. "As soon as we get into the house, you get into it."

Evan nodded and pulled the car up in front of the house. Pushing the car doors open, they climbed out and made their way up the driveway to the house. Sam reached into the bag that Kit had slung over her shoulder and grabbed the large can of salt. Unscrewing the top, he followed Kit and Evan into the house, immediately closing the door and laying a line of salt down in front of it.

"Evan, get in the circle," Kit ordered and nudged her sister towards the salt ring on the living room floor.

Stepping into it, Evan took the bag from Kit and unzipped it. Kneeling down, she began pulling items from the bag and laying them out on the floor. As she did, she could feel the house begin to pulse with a dark energy. The pages of the newspaper that had been left on the coffee table began to rustle from a spiritual breeze.

"I think they know what's going on," Evan told her sister and handed her another large can of salt. "I'll get the rest of the stuff set up. You and Sam, go salt the rest of the house. Hurry now. Go."

"Come on Sam," Kit said and headed towards the kitchen. "You take the upstairs, I'll take down here."

Sam took the EMF reader from his jacket pocket and then loped up the stairs two at a time to the top level and made his way through each of the rooms. Scanning the rooms with the EMF, he closed each of the doors and laid a salt ring along each doorway. When he got to the bathroom, the EMF spiked wildly.

There were no windows in the bathroom, but the darkness that they had encountered before manifested immediately and began to slither across the floor towards him. Sam backed away from it and moved down the hall. The hungry force spread quickly, following him, devouring everything in it's path.

"Yeah, I'm back. Come and get me, you evil bastard," Sam muttered, backing down the stairs towards the living room.

Darting into the kitchen, Kit flung open the door to the basement and went down the stairs. She was running a line of salt down the casement windows when she felt a chill run down her spine. Turning, she stiffened when she caught sight of the red-haired apparition. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them again, the apparition was still there.

"Why are you doing this to me?" The ghostly voice reached out to her.

"You're not my grandmother," Kit said coldly and flung salt at it. With an unholy shriek, it began to fade from sight. Running past it, Kit ran up the stairs and into the kitchen where she ran lines of salt over the windows and doors. She headed towards the kitchen door when the air around her began to freeze. She could see her breath, and felt the chill invade her body.

Forcing her way through the fingers of cold that curled around her, Kit stumbled up the hallway and into the living room, gasping painfully as the cold gripped her lungs when she tried to breathe. She met Sam at the top of the hallway and he reached around her waist, half dragging her into the living room and into the circle where Evan had everything for the ritual laid out.

Kit fell to her knees inside the circle and coughed as she tried to drag in a breath. The chill left her immediately and they heard an enraged snarl. Looking up they saw the apparition appear, staring at them looking like their grandmother. Its face contorted in fury and snarled at them again.

"You okay?" Evan asked her sister, purposely ignoring the apparition that floated beyond the reaches of the salt ring.

"I know what you mean now about being flash frozen," Kit muttered.

"Have you got everything ready?" Sam asked her, watching as the darkness of the Umbra demon spread over the living room. He saw it move around the candle holders that were spaced around the circle. Evan had circled each of them with a small circle of salt so that the spirits couldn't move them out of alignment.

"We're good to go," Evan told them, and then grabbed Johns journal and handed it to Sam. She then pulled the video camera out of the duffel back and switched on the night vision.

"What are you doing?" Kit asked her.

"I want to see them leave, make sure they're gone," Evan answered and panned the camera around the room. Orbs flew past the camera, seeming to attack the ring. "Okay Latin boy, read."

Sam flipped open journal and shot Evan an aggravated look. He was really going to talk to both her and Dean about calling him names like that.

Standing in the middle of the circle, Sam looked down at the page. Evan and Kit took up position on either side of him armed with lighters. With his voice ringing out, Sam began reading the passage. When he was finished, he looked at Evan and Kit and they each lit a candle as they repeated the verse. He read the second passage and the girls once again lit another candle each as they repeated after him. When Sam read the last passage, Kit and Evan both lit the last candle and repeated the verse.

Pulling their hands back into the salt ring, Kit and Evan jumped as the Umbra leaped up at them. It smashed against the protective ring and they heard it wail in anger. As they stood up, the furniture in the room began to bang on the floor and the pictures rattled on the walls. They felt the temperature fall sharply and then shoot up.

Sam kept reading, Kit and Evan repeating what he said. With each word the temperature fluctuated wildly. The spectral wind picked up, buffeting against the protective barrier. The snarls and cries of the demons became an unholy chorus around them.

Evan adjusted the screen on the camera and watched as the orbs flew angrily at them, bouncing off of the protective circle. She saw them seem to stretch and tear as they continued to chant. But she wasn't really interested in them. She found the one that she was looking for. The one orb that floated just in front of her. She saw its light stretch and she could almost hear a scream of pain in her head.

"Evan?" Kit asked her, looking over at her sister when she heard the high keening noise that was torn from her throat.

Tears stung Evan's eyes as she watched the orb stretch and a small tear begin to form. She couldn't do it. Looking down at her arms she shuddered. She couldn't let her grandmother be exorcized like this. Not when there was another way. Turning her head, she looked at Kit. "I can't do it, Kit. Not like this. I'm sorry."

Kit frowned as Evan folded up the camera and tossed it at her. "Evan!" She screamed when she found that her sister had taken the distraction as her chance to step out of the circle into the swirling mass of darkness growing around them.

"Keep going!" Evan cried back as the darkness began to surround her. "Nana, there's another way." The queasy stab of fear ran through her as she felt the tingling begin around her legs as the Umbra demon started to leach her energy.

The fear grew and for one split second, Evan was almost overwhelmed by it. She then felt the familiar warmth invade her body and she knew that it would be okay. Turning, she tried to step back into the circle, but the darkness pulled at her legs, holding her in place.

"Evan, give me your hand," Kit cried, reaching out for her sister. She had just taken hold of her fingers when Evan's body was ripped away from her. "Evan!"

"Kit?" Sam paused and looked at his wife.

"Keep going Sam," Kit told him. "Don't stop. Get the rest of them quickly." Taking his hand, she stepped over to his side and squeezed his hand tight in reassurance. "Hold on, Evan," she muttered and then took up reading with Sam.

A scream was torn from Evan's throat as the other spirits in the house slammed into her body, each clamoring to get inside, to find a safe haven from the ritual that was ripping their essences to shreds. Her body raised from the ground, the energy swirling around her, the ends of her hair whipping at her flesh.

"Let me go, Evangeline," Catherine Rennie's voice rang in her head. "This is going to kill you."

"No!" Evan panted harshly, clenching her eyes shut against the pain that was searing through her.

"I can't let you do this," Catherine said to her.

"It's not your choice," Evan countered through locked teeth. "You're not leaving me again! Please Nana."

"Kit, it's going to kill her," Sam hissed at her.

Kit heard Evan's voice and felt the tears sting her eyes. Looking at her sister she found Evan staring at her. "Don't you, stop," she saw her mouth at her. "Keep going Sam."

With a shake of his head, he continued to read the passages. He watched as the spirits battered against Evan's body. When he came to the end, he picked up the flask of Holy water and splashed it at the spirits. He heard their scream of pain mingle with Evan's and winced.

Splashing the holy water again, he watched it turn to mist in the darkness and he saw the swirling mass of energy disintegrate. Kit flipped open the video camera and watched as one by one the orbs disappeared.

"It's working," she told him with a cry of delight. The delight vanished when she saw the burn holes forming in Evan's clothes where the mist began to burn through. "Shit!"

Sam stepped out of the circle and wound his arms around Evan's waist and dragged her back inside. Laying her on the ground, he covered her with his jacket and then grabbed Kit's to lay over her legs. "With your Grandmother's spirit in her, the Holy Water is reacting to it. We have to keep her covered."

Kit smoothed Evan's hair away from her damp face as she shivered. "What do we do now?" She asked him.

"We have to wait until the candles burn down," Sam advised her, and then looked at the journal. "And then we have to bless the house."

As Kit watched over her sister, Evan's eyes shot open and she sat up straight. Letting out a wheezing breath, her eyes slid closed and she fell back again. "I am seriously going to kick her ass this time," she muttered and then yelped when something flicked her forehead. Looking around, Kit said aloud. "I'm not a little girl anymore Nana, you're not allowed to do that." 

An hour later, Sam picked up the camera and panned it around the room. When he saw nothing on the screen, he breathed a sigh of relief. Rising to his feet as the candled guttered out, he read the last passage of the ritual, blessing the house. He then broke the circle and felt something warm rush by him. Looking in the screen once more, he saw the single orb float wildly around the room.

"Your Nana seems happy," he smiled at Kit.

"She's got her house back," Evan groaned from the floor. She sat up and shook her head.

"If you ever do that again," Kit began but Evan held up a hand to forestall her.

"Trust me, I don't plan on it. It hurts way too much."

"What do we tell the Talberts? We told them we would clean the house out," Sam told them.

"We tell them the truth. The house is clean. We find the gris-gris that Nana buried and take it home with us," Kit said, looking at her sister. "That was your plan, wasn't it?" She smiled when Evan nodded weakly.

"How do you think your Mom's going to take to having yet another house guest?" Sam smirked.

"That house is getting kind of crowded," Evan muttered weakly. She took a deep breath and sighed. "Can we go home now?"

Sam chuckled softly and nodded. "We just have to find that gris-gris first."

"Yeah, why don't you guys go see about that," Evan waved her hand and muttered at them, then rose from the floor. She went over to the wingback chair in front of the fireplace and sat down in it.

"What, you're not going to help?" Kit asked her sister. 

"Possessed person here, remember?" Evan curled up in the chair and closed her eyes, the weakness taking over her.

"She's such a baby," Sam muttered and Kit nodded in agreement as they headed towards the kitchen.

As Evan drifted off, she felt a comforting warmth surround her. A smile drifted across her lips.

I Chapter Thirteen i 

The next morning, the three of them sat in the car sipping their coffee's as they waited for Father K to bring the Talberts back to the house. They had taken the gris-gris back to their parents' house, and the spirit of Catherine Rennie had taken up residence in the nursery, watching over her great-grandsons.

When they had arrived at the house earlier, they had run the EMF reader over inch of it and were gratified when they found no spiritual activity at all.

"There he is," Sam said as an old van with the name of Father K's church emblazoned on the side of it pulled up behind them.

Pushing open the car doors, the three of them piled out and leaned against the side of the car. Father K and the Talberts came up to them while the younger children ran across the street and into the back yard. Izzy Talbert walked up to Kit and smiled.

"Father K said you got it. You kept your promise."

Kit nodded. "Yeah. We got it. We got them all." Kit looked up at Evelyn and Jeffrey. "The house is clean."

"Did whatever was in the house do that to you?" Evelyn asked, pointing to the bandage on Evan's forehead.

Evan grimaced and rubbed her head. "Naw. The banister did it."

"Don't worry Evelyn, Evan has a hard head," Liam Ketcheson said to her and smirked at the dark look Evan sent him.

Jeffery laid his hand on Izzy's shoulder and turned her slightly towards him. "Go get your brothers. Tell them to go up to their rooms and start packing."

With a nod, Izzy turned and flashed them a smile before she took off across the street shouting to her brothers. "Okay you little weasels, Dad said to get up to your rooms."

Kit looked at the Talberts. "Packing?"

"Yes," Evelyn said slowly. "Don't get us wrong, we appreciate what you did," she paused.

"But we've decided to move back to Los Angeles. Our house there still hasn't sold, so we can move back in," Jeffrey finished, laying his hands on his wife's shoulders.

"What are you going to do with this one?" Sam asked them. He hated to think that they had just gone through hell for nothing.

"We were actually talking about turning it over to a property management firm. Maybe turn it into a rental property. Use it as an investment," Jeffrey told them.

"Maybe a rent to own kind of thing," Evelyn explained.

Kit frowned slightly and then looked at her sister and Sam. Her mind raced. "Um, could you excuse us for a minute?" She asked them and then grabbed Evan and Sam's arms, tugging them to the side.

"What's wrong with you?" Evan asked her sister when she had pulled them far enough away from the Talberts.

"What's wrong Kit?" Sam questioned his wife.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Kit asked them.

Sam shook his head and Evan frowned. "Obviously not," she told her sister.

"We could rent it," Kit said urgently.

"What do you mean?"

"Evan, you said yourself that Mom and Dad's house is getting kind of crowded. And as the boys get older they're going to want their own rooms," Kit pressed on. "If the Talberts are going to rent it out, who better to rent it than us?"

Evan looked at her sister. She could see where she was going with it. "There's enough room. The boys would have their own rooms."

"And our room," Kit said gesturing to Sam and herself, "would be at opposite ends of the house to yours and Dean's, which would be a bonus," she finished with a smirk.

"I'll say," Sam muttered and then flinched when both Kit and Evan whacked him on the arm.

"Nana's books and journals would be back where they belong," Kit continued.

"And we would have a place to train," Evan added.

"Not to mention that a stable address could only help Dean's second chances at bail," Sam picked up on Kit's train of thought.

"Exactly," Kit said with a grin.

Evan smiled at them and then turned. "Mr. and Mrs. Talbert, we have a proposition for you."

It had only taken the Talberts a week to clear their stuff out of the house and two days for Kit, Evan and Sam to move their few belongings in. Edgar, John and Kevin had helped them move the furniture that had once belonged to Catherine out of storage and back into the house. They had spent the next week and a half doing minor renovations on the house, returning it to the way the girls had remembered it when they were younger.

"Nana, I wanted that chair over in that corner," Evan said into the empty room, pulling the comfy wingback chair away from the fireplace and back into the corner under the reading lamp. She turned to leave the room and heard the scraping of the chair across the floor. Looking back, she saw that it had been put back in front of the fireplace. When she tried to pull it back into place, she found that she couldn't budge it from that spot, as if Nana were sitting on it. "Okay fine. It stays there," she grumbled and walked out of the room and into the kitchen where Kit and Sam were sitting at the kitchen table.

"We are seriously going to have to lay down some ground rules with Nana," Evan muttered, pouring herself a cup of coffee.

"You're the one who wanted to bring the gris-gris back here. We could have left her with your parents," Sam said and then flinched when he felt a flick on the back of the head. "Now I know how Dean feels," he muttered.

Kit chuckled under her breath and went back to feeding Jimmy.

Evan went over to the kitchen table and sat down beside JD's high chair. She picked him up out of the chair and set him on her lap, setting his bowl of Cheerio's in front of him. He wiggled a little on her lap and stuffed a handful of the cereal into his mouth. He started giggling and looked up into nothingness and Evan knew that Nana was there.

"Should we be worried that they can see her?" Evan asked Kit.

"I don't think so," Kit said with a shrug.

"Children have a heightened sense of the paranormal, probably because they haven't convinced themselves yet that it's not real. It's not unusual for them to see what adults can't," Sam explained. "And I think it's easier for her to reveal herself to them than to us."

"What do you think Dean's reaction is going to be?" Kit asked her sister.

Evan shrugged at her sister's question. "I don't know."

"What time does he appear before the judge today?" Sam questioned her.

"Eleven," Evan told him, her voice cracking nervously. As the days leading up to Dean's court date drew near, she grew ever more on edge.

"It's going to be okay, Evan," Kit tried to assure her sister, but she had to admit that she herself was feeling tense as well. "There is no way that the prosecution can refute the evidence that we have."

"I hope so," Evan said softly and then put down her cup of coffee to pick the cheerio's off of her sons face. She glanced out of the corner of her eye when her coffee cup started to slide across the table. "Nana," she growled softly.

"I think she's trying to tell you that you drink too much coffee," Kit laughed.

"Okay, house rule number one, don't touch my coffee," Evan said aloud and snatched her mug back, sipping it defiantly.

"This is going to be an interesting household," Sam said softly, shaking his head as he poured over his law text book.

"Tell me about it," Kit added.

I Chapter Fourteen /i 

The courtroom buzzed with voices as Dean was led back in by the guard. Someone had turned on the ceiling fans, but the gentle breeze wasn't enough to drive away the stifling heat. He could feel it seep into the suit he'd been forced to put on when he'd left the jail cell earlier that morning. His walk was stilted as he walked over to the defendant's table in the wrist and leg chains. His lawyer sat at the table, papers spread out before him, but that wasn't what caught Dean's attention.

When court had been recessed earlier for the judge to take a look at the evidence that had been presented to him and Dean had been lead out of the courtroom to wait in the paddocks, he had seen the brief look of fear on Evan's face. Looking at her now, he saw that she had firmly wiped it away as she sent him a wobbly smile.

He had been disappointed that they hadn't brought JD with them, leaving him with Angie while they were at the courthouse, but he had understood why they did and he was grateful. This was no place for a child. With any luck, JD would never have to see his daddy looking like a common criminal.

"Dean, sit down," Peter Caravetti whispered at him and Dean sat down at the table. He looked over his shoulder at his family and sent them a cocky smile that hid his nerves. His eyes caught hold of Evan's and he stared at her for a moment. She gave him a small smile and he saw the dimple that formed in her cheek and felt that familiar stirring.

"Will the defendant please rise?" The bailiff questioned and Dean snapped his attention back to them and rose beside his lawyer.

The judge looked down at him from behind his desk and Dean felt a frisson of unease run through him. "You're a very lucky man, Mr. Winchester, to have a family that's willing to fight this hard for you," he began. "Personally, I don't believe a word of this entire story. I find it difficult to believe that you did not bother to report your wallet stolen, nor that it was stolen by someone who happened to bear such an uncanny resemblance to you."

"Your honor," Peter Caravetti began but stopped when the man frowned at him.

"A person who just i happened /i to attack a woman who attended college with your brother and was in town as you and your brother were passing through on your road trip. Be that as it may, there has been no physical evidence to link to any of the murders that were committed in the area. You have an alibi for all but the final attack, and the final victim claims that her attacker resembled you enough in the dark that she was willing to let him enter her home under false pretenses."

i 'Thank you Becky,' /i Dean thought quickly.

"Based on the lack of evidence at the crime scenes and with the DNA results from your brother and father, I find that I have to drop the charges of identity theft and the other associated charges. I will be remanding the court records to the St. Louis court to have the death certificate and records updated to reflect the death of a John Doe in the commission of said attack. The traffic violation will be remanded to traffic court. I expect after this, that you will be pleading guilty and paying the associated fine to avoid further court appearances."

Dean stared at the judge for a moment before the cries of happiness broke through to him. The bailiff came over to him and unlocked the cuffs, releasing him. He turned to look at his lawyer for a moment.

"You're free to go," the man told him with a smile.

Dean turned and looked behind him and was engulfed in the scent of orange blossoms and vanilla as Evan threw her arms around his neck and held him tight. He wound his arms around her and held her tight as he looked over her shoulder at his family. They clapped him on the shoulder and Dean felt the tension seep out of him.

He was going home.


End file.
